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Determined to master her messy personal finances, Jean Chatzky immersed herself in learning about finance, financial freedom, and investing. She worked on Wall Street to understand the stock market, then transitioned to financial journalism. After being fired for being “too expensive,” she turned her side hustles into HerMoney—a safe space where women can build wealth and take control of their money. In this episode, Jean shares actionable insights on achieving financial freedom and building lasting confidence around money. In this episode, Hala and Jean will discuss: (00:00) Introduction 01:12 From Journalism to Financial Expertise 03:06 Skill Stacking 06:38 The Gender Wage Gap 11:21 Women Controlling Wealth and Spending 20:07 Navigating Relationships and Success 27:03 Women and Investing 30:09 The Importance of Financial Freedom 31:36 Homeownership: Is It Worth It? 35:47 Understanding Your Money Type 40:15 Budgeting and Avoiding Overspending 42:39 Strategies for Paying Down Debt 44:33 Improving Your Credit Score 47:34 Investing Wisely Jean Chatzky is the CEO and co-founder of HerMoney Media, a digital platform focused on enhancing financial planning, literacy, and wellness among women. She is an award-winning personal finance journalist, bestselling author, and host of the HerMoney podcast. With a background that spans Forbes, SmartMoney, and a 25-year tenure on NBC's Today show, she has earned many accolades, such as the Gracie Award for Outstanding Host. She has authored multiple bestselling books, including Women with Money and Pay It Down! She frequently appears on major platforms like CNN, MSNBC, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify Microsoft Teams - Stop paying for tools. Get everything you need, for free at aka.ms/profiting Mercury - Streamline your banking and finances in one place. Learn more at mercury.com/profiting LinkedIn Marketing Solutions - Get a $100 credit on your next campaign at linkedin.com/profiting Bilt Rewards - Start paying rent through Bilt and take advantage of your Neighborhood Benefits™ by going to joinbilt.com/PROFITING. Airbnb - Find yourself a co-host at airbnb.com/host Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services - yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship podcast, Business, Business podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal development, Starting a business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side hustle, Startup, mental health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth mindset, Finance, Financial, Personal Finance, Wealth, Stock Market, Scalability, Investment, Financial Freedom, Risk Management, Financial Planning, Business Coaching, Finance podcast, Investing, Saving
SummaryIn this episode of the E-commerce Content Creation Podcast, Daniel dives deep into the topic of Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems, exploring their importance yet lack of widespread adoption in the E-commerce space. He discusses the differences between cloud storage solutions and DAM systems, emphasizing the need for metadata, version control, and user permissions. Daniel also highlights the challenges of managing assets at scale and the necessity of having a structured workflow. He concludes by encouraging listeners to evaluate their current asset management practices and consider the benefits of implementing a DAM system.Key TakeawaysDAM adoption is still relatively low in eCommerce.Cloud storage tools can become chaotic as assets scale.Metadata is crucial for effective asset management.Version control helps track asset iterations and approvals.User roles in DAM systems provide granular access control.Integration with other systems enhances DAM functionality.Scalability is a key factor in choosing a DAM system.Evaluate your team's ability to find assets efficiently.Consider the governance of your digital assets.Stockpress offers a user-friendly DAM solution.CreditsHosted by: Daniel Jester - danieltjester.com
Peter Schiff made a name for himself in finance by challenging mainstream views on wealth and the economy. In 2011, he attended the Occupy Wall Street protests with a sign that read, “I am the 1%,” challenging the movement's perception of wealth inequality. A vocal critic of inflation and government spending, Peter accurately predicted the 2008 financial crisis. He also strongly advocates investing in real assets like gold, as opposed to Crypto. In this episode, Peter breaks down the real causes of inflation and income inequality, explains why Bitcoin isn't a safe investment and shares the best strategies to protect your wealth from inflation. In this episode, Hala and Peter will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:17) The Real Cause of Wealth Inequality (07:35) Capitalism and the Value of Entrepreneurs (13:34) Why Higher Taxes on the Rich Hurt Investment (17:26) How Government Spending Fuels Inflation (26:57) Why Gold Is the Ultimate Store of Wealth (32:30) Investing in Business for Long-Term Wealth (40:24) The Truth About Bitcoin's Value (48:26) Why Investing in Crypto Is a Financial Mistake (59:51) Preparing for the Inevitable Economic Crash (01:08:02) Protecting Your Business in a Recession Peter Schiff is an investment broker, financial commentator, author, and the founder of Euro Pacific Asset Management. Known for accurately predicting the 2008 financial crisis, he strongly advocates for gold as both a store of value and protection against inflation. Peter also hosts The Peter Schiff Show podcast and has authored bestselling books, including Crash Proof and The Real Crash. A well-known critic of Bitcoin, he has called it a "Ponzi scheme." Sponsored By: RobinHood - Receive your 3% boost on annual IRA contributions, sign up at robinhood.com/gold Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify Microsoft Teams - Stop paying for tools. Get everything you need, for free at aka.ms/profiting Mercury - Streamline your banking and finances in one place. Learn more at mercury.com/profiting Open Phone - Streamline and scale your customer communications with OpenPhone. Get 20% off your first 6 months at openphone.com/profiting LinkedIn Marketing Solutions - Get a $100 credit on your next campaign at linkedin.com/profiting Bilt Rewards - Start paying rent through Bilt and take advantage of your Neighborhood Benefits™ by going to joinbilt.com/PROFITING. Airbnb - Find yourself a co-host at airbnb.com/host Resources Mentioned: Peter's Book, The Real Crash: bit.ly/Real-Crash Peter's Podcast, The Peter Schiff Show Podcast: bit.ly/PeterSchiffShow Euro Pacific Capital Website: europac.com Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Personal Finance, Scalability, Financial Freedom, Risk Management, Financial Planning, Business Coaching, Finance Podcast, Saving.
In this eye-opening episode of the Health Coach Academy Podcast, we welcome Neil Twa, founder of Voltage Digital Marketing and a top expert in launching physical product businesses on Amazon. If you've ever wondered how to go beyond trading time for money as a health coach — this episode is your roadmap.
SummaryToma Heremans, CEO of the Obol Association, joins the ATX DAO Podcast to explore how distributed validator technology is reshaping Ethereum staking. In this deep-dive episode, he breaks down the core challenges of proof-of-stake—like slashing risks, machine failure, and validator centralization—and explains how Obol's middleware, enables decentralized validator clusters to deliver higher uptime, stronger security, and better rewards. From solo stakers to institutional operators, Obol is making staking more resilient and scalable.The conversation spans technical infrastructure, Ethereum's long-term roadmap, and the role Obol plays in supporting trustless staking across protocols like Lido, EtherFi, and Monad. Toma also shares Obol's vision of creating a decentralized marketplace for operators to run not just validators, but any distributed app—from AI agents to decentralized storage. Whether you're a validator, builder, or crypto-curious, this episode offers a clear look at the future of decentralized infrastructure.Chapters00:00 Introduction to Obol and Decentralized Validation03:01 Understanding Distributed Validators07:17 The Evolution of Obol's Problem-Solving Approach11:44 Middleware Implementation and Its Importance16:14 Increasing Node Operator Diversity and Security20:05 Scalability and Cluster Dynamics28:21 Solo Staker Use Case Exploration28:52 Building a Cluster for Staking31:15 The Mission of the Obol Association34:16 Governance Structure and Community Control36:05 The Future of the Obol Collective39:25 Expanding Beyond Ethereum42:07 The Role of the $OBOL Token45:44 Exploring Financial Instruments and Tokenization51:57 Getting Involved with ObolConnect with Toma and Obol:X (Twitter): Toma - @_Cryptoma | Obol - @Obol_CollectiveLinkedIn: Thomas Heremans | Obol Association | Obol CollectiveWebsite: https://obol.orgTo learn more about ATX DAO:Check out the ATX DAO websiteFollow @ATXDAO on X (Twitter)Subscribe to our newsletterConnect with us on LinkedInJoin the community in the ATX DAO DiscordConnect with the ATX DAO Podcast team on X (Twitter):Ash: @ashinthewildLuke: @Luke152Support the Podcast:If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review and share it with your network.Subscribe for more insights, interviews, and deep dives into the world of Web3.
In this episode, we sit down with Alex Wylie, CEO of Volt Lithium (TSXV: VLT, OTCQB: VLTLF), to discuss the company's innovative approach to lithium extraction from oilfield brines. Alex shares insights on Volt's low-CAPEX strategy, proprietary technology, and rapid scale-up from pilot projects to commercial operations. With significant opportunities in the Permian Basin, Texas, and expansion plans in North Dakota's Bakken, Volt Lithium aims to become a leading domestic lithium supplier serving the underserved U.S. industrial market. CHAPTERS
Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.Today's episode dives into a groundbreaking partnership that could change the trajectory of how the wealth channel invests into private markets.We are joined by BlackRock's Senior Managing Director, Head of the Americas Client Business, Co-Head of U.S. Wealth Advisory (USWA), and a member of the Global Executive Committee for BlackRock Joe DeVico and Head of Product for US Wealth & Head of Alts to Wealth Jon Diorio and Partners Group's Partner, Co-Head of Private Wealth, Head of the New York Office, Member of the Global Executive Board, Partners Group Rob Collins to discuss their partnership on a private markets model portfolio purpose-built for the wealth channel.Joe, Jon, and Rob discuss what Rob calls in the podcast the industry's “iPhone moment.” This model portfolio partnership that brings together BlackRock's private markets and technology capabilities and Partners Group's history as a pioneer in the evergreen funds space is a big moment for private markets. The partnership enables the wealth channel to seamlessly access private markets solutions, understand how it fits into a broader asset allocation model, and handles rebalancing in a turnkey fashion.We had a fascinating discussion about this partnership and why the wealth channel needs turnkey solutions such as model portfolios. We discussed:Why model portfolios could be the “iPhone moment” for private markets.The anatomy of the partnership between BlackRock and Partners Group to create private markets model portfolios.How to balance personalization and customization with standardization of delivery to the wealth channel.How to create differentiation with private markets product offerings with different product structures.The mechanics of a private markets model portfolio.How education plays a role in advisor adoption of private markets products and model portfolios.Thanks Joe, Jon, and Rob for sharing your wisdom and experience on public and private markets as you help bring private markets into the mainstream.Subscribe to Alt Goes Mainstream to receive the weekly newsletter every Sunday and all of AGM's podcasts.A word from AGM podcast sponsor, Ultimus Fund SolutionsThis episode of Alt Goes Mainstream is brought to you by Ultimus Fund Solutions, a leading full-service fund administrator for asset managers in private and public markets. As private markets continue to move into the mainstream, the industry requires infrastructure solutions that help funds and investors keep pace. In an increasingly sophisticated financial marketplace, investment managers must navigate a growing array of challenges: elaborate fund structures, specialized strategies, evolving compliance requirements, a growing need for sophisticated reporting, and intensifying demands for transparency.To assist with these challenging opportunities, more and more fund sponsors and asset managers are turning to Ultimus, a leading service provider that blends high tech and high touch in unique and customized fund administration and middle office solutions for a diverse and growing universe of over 450 clients and 1,800 funds, representing $500 billion assets under administration, all handled by a team of over 1,000 professionals. Ultimus offers a wide range of capabilities across registered funds, private funds and public plans, as well as outsourced middle office services. Delivering operational excellence, Ultimus helps firms manage the ever-changing regulatory environment while meeting the needs of their institutional and retail investors. Ultimus provides comprehensive operational support and fund governance services to help managers successfully launch retail alternative products.Visit www.ultimusfundsolutions.com to learn more about Ultimus' technology enhanced services and solutions or contact Ultimus Executive Vice President of Business Development Gary Harris on email at gharris@ultimusfundsolutions.com.We thank Ultimus for their support of alts going mainstream.Show Notes00:00 Introduction to our Sponsor, Ultimus Fund Solutions01:18 Alt Goes Mainstream Theme Song01:56 Introduction to Today's Episode01:58 Groundbreaking Partnership Announcement03:32 Welcome to the BlackRock Studio04:05 Backgrounds of Joe and Jon from BlackRock05:48 Rob's Background and Perspective07:13 Why this is an iPhone Moment for Private Markets07:55 Challenges in Private Markets Adoption12:48 Why Now is the Right Time16:11 The Importance of Partnership21:51 Building a Brand in Private Markets26:48 Evolution of Fixed Income Markets27:10 Electronification of Private Markets27:21 Educating the Wealth Channel28:13 Importance of Excellent Execution28:44 Proving Performance in Private Markets29:27 Building the Right Solution29:48 Client Demand for Private Market Access30:34 Customizing Asset Allocation31:41 Transparency in Model SMAs32:21 Blurring Lines Between Public and Private Markets33:12 Foundational Equity in Private Markets34:15 Combining Public and Private Solutions35:25 Democratization of Private Markets36:19 Active vs. Passive in Private Markets37:58 Challenges in Market Adoption38:28 Scalability and Diversification39:27 Evergreen Funds and Capital Deployment42:03 Seismic Shift in Private Markets42:47 Future of Private Market Solutions49:59 Personalization in Portfolio Building50:53 Patience and Private Markets51:00 Final Thoughts on Private Market Innovation54:41 Conclusion and Podcast OutroEditing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant.
The GeekNarrator memberships can be joined here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_mGuY4g0mggeUGM6V1osdA/joinMembership will get you access to member only videos, exclusive notes and monthly 1:1 with me. Here you can see all the member only videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=UUMO_mGuY4g0mggeUGM6V1osdA------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------About this episode: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In this conversation, Jacopo and Ciro discuss their journey in building Bauplan, a platform designed to simplify data management and enhance developer experience. They explore the challenges faced in data bottlenecks, the integration of development and production environments, and the unique approach of Bauplan using serverless functions and Git-like versioning for data. The discussion also touches on scalability, handling large data workloads, and the critical aspects of reproducibility and compliance in data management. Chapters:00:00 Introduction03:00 The Data Bottleneck: Challenges in Data Management06:14 Bridging Development and Production: The Need for Integration09:06 Serverless Functions and Git for Data17:03 Developer Experience: Reducing Complexity in Data Management19:45 The Role of Functions in Data Pipelines: A New Paradigm23:40 Building Robust Data Solutions: Versioning and Parameters30:13 Optimizing Data Processing: Bauplan Runtime46:46 Understanding Control Planes and Data Management48:51 Ensuring Robustness in Data Pipelines52:38 Data Quality and Testing Mechanisms54:43 Branching and Collaboration in Data Development57:09 Scalability and Resource Management in Data Functions01:01:13 Handling Large Data Workloads and Use Cases01:09:05 Reproducibility and Compliance in Data Management01:16:46 Future Directions in Data Engineering and Use CasesLinks and References:Bauplan website:https://www.bauplanlabs.com
In this episode of Project Synapse, hosts discuss the underestimated changes brought about by advanced AI systems, the need for critical thinking, and preparedness for scenarios triggered by rapid technological advancements. The conversation covers the impactful paper 'Preparing for the Intelligence Explosion' by Will McCaskill and Finn Moon House, which emphasizes the acceleration of AI and the potential consequences on society. Amidst AI's advancements in diverse fields like manufacturing and cybersecurity, the hosts shed light on the importance of foresight and human adaptability to maintain balance and progress in an AI-driven future. 00:00 A Quiet Week and Unexpected Snow 00:17 Surviving the Ice Storm 01:48 Generator Troubles and Perplexity AI 03:23 Discussing the Intelligence Explosion Paper 04:44 Implications of Rapid AI Advancements 08:42 Historical Comparisons and Accelerated Change 12:47 Challenges in Organizational Change 17:14 Security Concerns in the Age of AI 22:34 Exponential Growth in AI Efficiency 34:18 AI Designing AI: The Future of Scalability 34:48 The Implications of Autonomous Warfare 35:44 Efficiency in AI Training and Compute 36:33 The Countdown to Superintelligence 37:35 Tariffs and Trade Imbalances: A Misunderstanding 44:01 Critical Thinking in the Age of AI 59:00 The Importance of Scenario Planning 01:00:47 The Future of Employment and Automation 01:03:14 The Human Element in a Technological World 01:04:43 Embracing AI in the Workplace 01:07:58 Concluding Thoughts: Imagining a Harmonious Future
On this week's show we discuss whether physical media is making a comeback and could a Bezel-less OLED be the future of large format TVs. We also read your emails and take a look at the week's news. News: Google kills off Nest Protect, partners with First Alert for new smart smoke detector Christie to collaborate with Dolby to develop the next generation of Dolby Vision laser projection systems YouTube Sees Record Viewing, Beats Disney in TV Viewing Share Other: 2025 Box-Office Aims To Hit $34 Billion Physical media is finally making a comeback, and here's the proof Despite a decline in overall physical media sales, which dipped below $1 billion in 2024, there are signs of resilience and growth in specific sectors. Major retailers like Best Buy and Target are phasing out physical media, but Sony's announcement of a new Blu-ray player, the UBP-X700/K, set for release in 2025, signals continued investment in the format. This player, while currently only available in Japan, supports 4K Blu-rays, which are region-free and growing in market share despite the higher cost compared to its predecessor. There is a niche but dedicated community keeping physical media alive, supported by boutique retailers like Criterion Collection and Arrow, which preserve films such as David Lynch's catalog, including the upcoming 4K release of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Mainstream releases still often get physical versions, and affordable options abound online and in thrift stores, offering DVDs, Blu-rays, and 4K discs compatible with modern players. There are personal advantages of physical ownership, like better quality and reliability compared to streaming, which can be plagued by shifting availability and rising costs. While consoles may soon abandon disc drives and companies like LG have discontinued Blu-ray players, the 4K Blu-ray market is a bright spot, with growing demand evidenced by the sell-out of Oppenheimer's 4K release in 2023. The new Sony player supports Dolby Vision (though it requires manual toggling), enhancing the viewing experience over consoles like Xbox or PS5. The article concludes that 2025 is an opportune time to embrace physical media, especially for those frustrated with streaming, as it offers a tangible, cost-effective alternative with no risk of content disappearing—though it comes with minor inconveniences like disc-swapping for TV binges. The future remains uncertain, but the 4K sector offers hope for collectors. Full article here… Bezel-less tile OLED TVs could be the future of large-screen displays (from Tom's Guide) Samsung Display showcased a variety of innovative display technologies at MWC 2025, with a standout being their "bezel-less" OLED tile design. This concept involves combining smaller OLED panels, such as two 31.5-inch QD-OLED screens, to form larger displays with significantly reduced bezels—40% narrower than typical current market offerings. This makes the seams nearly invisible from a standard viewing distance, opening up possibilities for future OLED TV designs. The bezel-less OLED tiles could revolutionize large-screen TVs by improving portability and setup logistics. Unlike traditional massive TVs (e.g., 98- or 110-inch models), which are cumbersome and costly to ship and install, these tiles could be transported and assembled in smaller, manageable parts—ideal for urban dwellers in older buildings with limited access. Additionally, the design might simplify wall-mounting, potentially eliminating the need for complex mounts by allowing the tiles to sit flush against walls, reminiscent of concepts like Displace TV's suction-cup OLEDs. This technology could particularly enhance lifestyle TVs, such as Samsung's The Frame, by offering a sleek, frameless look that blends seamlessly into home decor. However, challenges remain—similar to MicroLED, the intricate engineering might make these TVs prohibitively expensive initially. While not yet ready for consumers, Samsung Display's tile concept hints at an exciting future for bigger, better, and more practical OLED TVs. Full article here… Let's Discuss Why This is a Good Thing: Easier Transport and Setup for Large TVs Simplified Wall-Mounting Enhanced Design for Lifestyle TVs Scalability and Customization Improved Visual Experience Easier Transport and Setup for Large TVs The tiled OLED concept tackles the logistical nightmare of moving and installing massive TVs. By breaking a large display (like a 115-inch screen) into smaller, manageable pieces (e.g., two 31.5-inch QD-OLED panels), it becomes far more practical to transport and assemble. This is a game-changer for people in tricky living situations—like those in high-rise apartments with no elevators or tight staircases—where hauling a giant, crated TV is a non-starter. Instead of wrestling with one unwieldy unit, you'd handle smaller components, making setup less of a Herculean task. Simplified Wall-Mounting The ultra-thin, virtually bezel-less design hints at a future where wall-mounting could be a breeze. These tiles seem to sit flush against surfaces, potentially reducing or even eliminating the need for bulky wall mounts and toolkits. While it's not clear if they'd use something like suction cups (à la Displace TV) or another method, the streamlined look suggests a setup that's less about drilling and more about placement. This could make mounting a TV—especially over a fireplace or in tight spaces—more accessible and less intimidating. Enhanced Design for Lifestyle TVs The bezel-less tile concept aligns perfectly with the aesthetic goals of lifestyle TVs, like Samsung's The Frame. A flush, frameless display could elevate the “TV as art” vibe, blending seamlessly into home decor. You could even add a custom frame around the tiles if desired, keeping the versatility intact. This design flexibility could redefine how TVs integrate into living spaces, making them less of an obtrusive tech piece and more of a stylish feature. Scalability and Customization Tiling smaller OLED panels to create a larger screen opens up possibilities for scalable TV sizes. Want a 65-inch TV today but a 98-inch tomorrow? In theory, you could add more tiles. While this might not be fully practical yet, the modular nature suggests a future where screen size isn't fixed at purchase, offering a level of adaptability that current TVs lack. Improved Visual Experience Shrinking bezels by 40% compared to standard displays means the seams between tiles are nearly invisible at normal viewing distances. This creates a more immersive, uninterrupted picture—crucial for OLED's strengths like deep blacks and vibrant colors. It's a step toward making massive OLED screens feel cohesive rather than patchwork, enhancing the viewing experience for movies, gaming, or VR applications. It's Not All Good News: Cost and Accessibility Manufacturing and Durability Challenges Installation Complexity Wall-Mounting Uncertainties Potential Visual Trade-Offs Cost and Accessibility Complex engineering often leads to high costs. Much like MicroLED TVs, which are expensive due to their manufacturing processes, these bezel-less OLED tiles could follow a similar path. If they hit the market, they might be priced out of reach for the average consumer. Manufacturing and Durability Challenges Shrinking bezels by 40% and tiling multiple panels together sounds impressive, but it raises questions about production complexity and long-term durability. Seamlessly connecting 31.5-inch QD-OLED panels could introduce weak points where the tiles meet, potentially leading to issues like uneven wear, panel misalignment over time, or vulnerability to damage during transport or installation. The "bezel-less" claim might also exaggerate real-world performance if micro-gaps or seams remain faintly visible up close. Installation Complexity While the concept promises to simplify transporting and setting up XXL TVs by breaking them into smaller components, the assembly process could still be a hurdle. Consumers might need precise instructions—or even professional help—to align and connect the tiles perfectly. If the panels don't lock together intuitively or require specialized tools, the setup could negate some of the portability benefits, especially for less tech-savvy users. Wall-Mounting Uncertainties The idea of tiles sitting flush against the wall (possibly without traditional mounts) is appealing, but it's unclear how practical this would be. If Samsung Display isn't using suction cups like Displace TV, the attachment method remains a mystery. Adhesive solutions could damage walls or lose strength over time, while a lack of standard mounting hardware might make the TVs harder to secure safely, especially in homes with kids or pets. The "glued-on" aesthetic might also limit repositioning or removal flexibility. Potential Visual Trade-Offs Tiling multiple OLED panels could introduce subtle visual inconsistencies, such as slight color or brightness variations between tiles, especially as they age. While the bezels are minimized, any imperfections in alignment or panel uniformity might become noticeable during close viewing or in scenes with solid colors, detracting from the premium OLED experience consumers expect.
Eiso Kant, CTO of poolside AI, discusses the company's approach to building frontier AI foundation models, particularly focused on software development. Their unique strategy is reinforcement learning from code execution feedback which is an important axis for scaling AI capabilities beyond just increasing model size or data volume. Kant predicts human-level AI in knowledge work could be achieved within 18-36 months, outlining poolside's vision to dramatically increase software development productivity and accessibility. SPONSOR MESSAGES:***Tufa AI Labs is a brand new research lab in Zurich started by Benjamin Crouzier focussed on o-series style reasoning and AGI. They are hiring a Chief Engineer and ML engineers. Events in Zurich. Goto https://tufalabs.ai/***Eiso Kant:https://x.com/eisokanthttps://poolside.ai/TRANSCRIPT:https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/szepl6taqziyqie9wgmk9/poolside.pdf?rlkey=iqar7dcwshyrpeoz0xa76k422&dl=0TOC:1. Foundation Models and AI Strategy [00:00:00] 1.1 Foundation Models and Timeline Predictions for AI Development [00:02:55] 1.2 Poolside AI's Corporate History and Strategic Vision [00:06:48] 1.3 Foundation Models vs Enterprise Customization Trade-offs2. Reinforcement Learning and Model Economics [00:15:42] 2.1 Reinforcement Learning and Code Execution Feedback Approaches [00:22:06] 2.2 Model Economics and Experimental Optimization3. Enterprise AI Implementation [00:25:20] 3.1 Poolside's Enterprise Deployment Strategy and Infrastructure [00:26:00] 3.2 Enterprise-First Business Model and Market Focus [00:27:05] 3.3 Foundation Models and AGI Development Approach [00:29:24] 3.4 DeepSeek Case Study and Infrastructure Requirements4. LLM Architecture and Performance [00:30:15] 4.1 Distributed Training and Hardware Architecture Optimization [00:33:01] 4.2 Model Scaling Strategies and Chinchilla Optimality Trade-offs [00:36:04] 4.3 Emergent Reasoning and Model Architecture Comparisons [00:43:26] 4.4 Balancing Creativity and Determinism in AI Models [00:50:01] 4.5 AI-Assisted Software Development Evolution5. AI Systems Engineering and Scalability [00:58:31] 5.1 Enterprise AI Productivity and Implementation Challenges [00:58:40] 5.2 Low-Code Solutions and Enterprise Hiring Trends [01:01:25] 5.3 Distributed Systems and Engineering Complexity [01:01:50] 5.4 GenAI Architecture and Scalability Patterns [01:01:55] 5.5 Scaling Limitations and Architectural Patterns in AI Code Generation6. AI Safety and Future Capabilities [01:06:23] 6.1 Semantic Understanding and Language Model Reasoning Approaches [01:12:42] 6.2 Model Interpretability and Safety Considerations in AI Systems [01:16:27] 6.3 AI vs Human Capabilities in Software Development [01:33:45] 6.4 Enterprise Deployment and Security ArchitectureCORE REFS (see shownotes for URLs/more refs):[00:15:45] Research demonstrating how training on model-generated content leads to distribution collapse in AI models, Ilia Shumailov et al. (Key finding on synthetic data risk)[00:20:05] Foundational paper introducing Word2Vec for computing word vector representations, Tomas Mikolov et al. (Seminal NLP technique)[00:22:15] OpenAI O3 model's breakthrough performance on ARC Prize Challenge, OpenAI (Significant AI reasoning benchmark achievement)[00:22:40] Seminal paper proposing a formal definition of intelligence as skill-acquisition efficiency, François Chollet (Influential AI definition/philosophy)[00:30:30] Technical documentation of DeepSeek's V3 model architecture and capabilities, DeepSeek AI (Details on a major new model)[00:34:30] Foundational paper establishing optimal scaling laws for LLM training, Jordan Hoffmann et al. (Key paper on LLM scaling)[00:45:45] Seminal essay arguing that scaling computation consistently trumps human-engineered solutions in AI, Richard S. Sutton (Influential "Bitter Lesson" perspective)
In this episode, Carlos Peralta returns to The Tech Trek to dive deep into data culture in the wearable tech space, sharing how WHOOP turns petabytes of real-time biometric data into personalized, actionable insights. We explore the technical complexities behind data ingestion, transformation, and delivery, and how the mission-driven nature of WHOOP influences both their engineering decisions and company culture.
#227 How to Choose the Right Tech Stack Without Wasting Money with Tim Cadbury https://open.spotify.com/episode/4mVO2Gtl2Vx5bQmDNuWfTi In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, selecting the right technology stack is critical for organizational success and financial efficiency. The strategic selection of technological tools can make or break a company's operational effectiveness, directly impacting its growth trajectory and competitive positioning. This podcast episode featuring Tim Cadbury, a fractional CFO at InfiniteCFO, delves deep into the nuanced world of tech stack selection for high-growth businesses. Cadbury brings a wealth of experience from corporate giants like ITV and the dynamic startup ecosystem, offering listeners invaluable insights into navigating the complex terrain of technological infrastructure selection. Key discussion points revolve around the challenges businesses face when choosing technological solutions, the importance of scalability, and the need for adaptable systems that can grow with an organization. Cadbury emphasizes that tech stack selection is not a one-size-fits-all approach but a strategic decision requiring careful consideration of current needs and future growth potential. The conversation provides a comprehensive exploration of how fractional CFOs like Cadbury help businesses make informed technological investments, leveraging their extensive experience and understanding of various industry ecosystems. By sharing practical examples and strategic approaches, the podcast offers a roadmap for businesses seeking to optimize their technological investments without unnecessary expenditure. About Tim Cadbury Tim supports high growth businesses with a CFO-led virtual finance function. In his 3 years at InfiniteCFO, he's helped businesses in B2B SaaS, Cyber, LegalTech, AdTech, InsureTech, and Software. Successful projects include fundraises, M&A and finance transformations. Previously, Tim spent 13 years at ITV plc, including roles in Investor Relations, as Group Head of FP&A and as Finance Director for the £2bn advertising business. He spent 4 years out of finance growing the technology business SDN to >£65m profit, which included negotiating all commercial contracts and running the tech team. He was also a Director of D34, a joint venture with Channel 4 which transmits all the UK's commercial Public Service Broadcasters. Tim qualified as an ACA with KPMG London. Key topics covered: Fractional CFO approach to supporting high-growth technology businesses Strategic importance of selecting scalable technological infrastructure Leveraging Xero and complementary ecosystem tools for financial management Role of AI and automation in streamlining repetitive financial tasks Importance of understanding business-specific technological requirements Balancing current technological needs with future growth potential Navigating fundraising and due diligence with robust technological systems Developing comprehensive financial strategies through intelligent tech selection Continuous learning and adaptation in technological ecosystem Value of professional networks in making informed technological decisions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auEV4K6aMyE&t=2s Links Tim Cadbury on LinkedIn Kevin Appleby on LinkedIn GrowCFO Mentoring Timestamps 0:05:59 - Professional background introduction 0:10:38 - Career progression at ITV 0:16:50 - Transition to fractional CFO role 0:22:13 - Tech stack selection strategies 0:28:48 - Scalability of financial systems 0:34:18 - Comprehensive financial operations approach 0:37:03 - Fundraising landscape insights 0:40:22 - Impact of professional development programs 0:45:09 - Future career perspective Find out more about GrowCFO If you enjoyed this podcast, you can subscribe to the GrowCFO Show with your favorite podcast app.
#302 One of my favorite strategies is to either use software in an existing business or start and sell a software or SaaS product of your own. The possibilities are ENDLESS! In this lesson, I speak with my good friend and business partner Trey Richards, who is one of the best software developers and just all around one of the smartest people I know and we discussed how to use software to either start a business or grow an existing business. Check it out! (Original Air Date - 11/2/23) What we discuss with Trey: + Introduction and Personal Updates + The Power of Software in Business + The Magic of Software Development + The Importance of Mindset in Software Development + The Difference Between a Hammer Swinger and an Architect in Software Development + The Journey into Software Development + Understanding Different Types of Software + The Value of Owning vs Using Software + The Unique Scalability of Software + The Power of Software Development + Understanding the MVP Model + The Lean Startup Approach + The Importance of Scalability in Software + Building a Successful Software Company + The Reality of Starting a Software Company + The Journey of Five Oak + The Importance of a Business Plan in Software Development + The Potential of AI in Software Development + The Role of Software in HR + The Potential of Developing a Better Slack + The Importance of Choosing the Right Developer + The Power of Taking Action in Business For more information go to MillionaireUniversity.com To get access to our FREE Business Training course go to MillionaireUniversity.com/training. And follow us on: Instagram Facebook Tik Tok Youtube Twitter To get exclusive offers mentioned in this episode and to support the show, visit millionaireuniversity.com/sponsors. Want to hear from more incredible entrepreneurs? Check out all of our interviews here! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This week on the Hemp Show, we talk with global hemp expert and co-founder of the Hemp Plastic Company, Paul Benhaim. Benhaim takes us on a deep dive into hemp plastics — and why he believes scalability is more important than purity. We'll hear about the company and the process of turning hemp into objects like didgeridoos and car parts. Benhaim has been in the hemp industry for over 30 years, finding early success with a hemp health bar in Europe in the 1990s before moving to Australia where he founded the largest hemp food company in the Southern Hemisphere. Benhaim tells us about a trip to the Himalayas that inspired his research into communities, health, diet and — hemp. "The science says it's the best thing for humanity and it leads to people being vibrant and healthy," Benhaim says. This experience led Benhaim to write the book "H.E.M.P.: Healthy Eating Made Possible." Benhaim explains the 'endocannabinoids,' and the endocannabinoid system present in every living mammal. “Our body is literally made for cannabis, hence the system being called the endocannabinoid system, which until relatively recently was never taught to doctors, never taught in medicine. An entire system was kind of ignored," says Benhaim. Resources & Links: ✅ Hemp Plastic Company ✅ H.E.M.P.: Healthy Eating Made Possible ✅ Interview with Exlinol's Gabriel Ettenson ✅ Cannabis Psychedelics Thanks to our sponsors: ✅ IND Hemp – Family-owned hemp feed, food and fiber company bringing new opportunities to farmers and manufacturers across the U.S. ✅ Forever Green – Distributors of the KP4 Hemp Cutter Music by Tin Bird Shadow Topics covered in this conversation: • Paul's introduction to hemp and his early “aha” moment • The connection between food, community and vibrant health • Founding of Hemp Foods Australia and Elixinol • The story behind his first book: "H.E.M.P.: Healthy Eating Made Possible" • How hemp led to broader interests in natural living, permaculture and traditional medicine • The endocannabinoid system: What it is and why it matters • Paul's thoughts on full-spectrum CBD vs. isolated compounds • Why he believes CBD is a separate industry from both marijuana and industrial hemp • Challenges with regulation and intoxicating hemp-derived cannabinoids (like Delta-8, HHC) • Global perspectives on hemp vs. the U.S. approach • Hemp's historical context and linguistic confusion around the word "hemp" • The scalability problem in hemp and why it's critical to solve • The evolution of hemp plastic and the story behind the hemp harmonica • Paul's current work with The Hemp Plastic Company • Technical details of making hemp plastic pellets for industrial use • Why end markets matter more than farming alone • Potential for hemp to scale up as a sustainable alternative in global manufacturing • Circular economies and local empowerment in Africa • Hemp opportunities in Thailand and Asia • NIHC and international cooperation in the hemp industry • Paul's involvement with the U.S. government and COP (climate talks) • Cannabis psychedelics: therapeutic uses and his new project • Meditation, dance and his personal approach to mindfulness • Reflections on the need for a new, cooperative paradigm in hemp and beyond
In today's episode, I'm discussing the number one reason why your business isn't scaling, and that's tracking your business metrics.While it is possible to grow without tracking numbers initially, sustainable scaling requires detailed metric analysis. At my current business level, most of my time is spent analyzing numbers, experimenting, and optimizing rather than creating new content.Check out my Scalability program, which is open for enrollment until March 31st at 10 PM MT!In today's episode, I cover:Essential metrics businesses should trackWhat traffic-to-offer conversion rates should look likeHow opt-in form conversions worksWhat tripwire conversion rates look likeWhat upsell conversion rates should be Connect with Mya:Follow on Instagram @myanicholJoin my email listCheck out my websiteNow on YouTube Make sure to hit subscribe/follow so you never miss an episode! Some of the links mentioned are affiliate links, which help to support this podcast at no additional cost to you. Find the complete show notes here: https://myanichol.com/2025/03/25/why-your-business-isnt-scaling/ Resources & Links:ScalabilityClickUpThe Online Blueprint150 Free HooksList Building 101ManychatIG UniversityKajabi 30-day free trial + 20 free story templates
Hi Beloved. There is NO DOUBT we are on the cusp of an economic tail wind, shifting into the ecosystem of “Sound Money” through transparency. TRUE CONFESSION: I purchased Bitcoin in 2011, and 5 years later, sold due to it's scandal in the dark web and child trafficking (proven). XRP? Yes please. You're about to learn why. KASS. Digital assets? That's not your vibe. Glad you asked. It actually VERY MUCH is my vibe as an avid economic student. I will be dropping in here and there with foundational education for us to come around the table, learn from and ultimately support you in understanding your options as we move from one decline to the greatest incline in history. This may not make any sense to you - but I suggest listening and letting your subconscious mind to take it in, so when this does hit peak, you have some insights that will remove fear and embody greater understanding. This video features my Friend Rob Dunningham and Kyle. READY? Let's break down the tech stacks behind the emerging digital asset ecosystem. There's a lot of nuance and legal precedent that's important to understand.On one side, we have Bitcoin - the mysterious crypto that's been hyped relentlessly by the media for 16 years. But what does it really do? Payments? Smart contracts? Scalability? Efficiency?Then there's Ethereum - the smart contract platform invested in by CCP-linked entities, JP Morgan, etc. Its founder Vitalik Buterin even crashed on the couch of Ripple's early CTO.And let's talk about Tether - the offshore, unaudited stablecoin whose magical printing seems to prop up Bitcoin's price. Suspicious much?On the other hand, you have Ripple and XRP. XRP has clear legal definition as a virtual currency, not a security. It has real-world use cases, efficiency, and transparency that the others lack.Ripple built on top of the open-source XRP Ledger, similar to how Red Hat built on Linux. This allows interoperability, smart contracts, tokenization, and more across the crypto ecosystem.The key is the XRP token - it acts as the "motor oil" enabling fast, low-cost value transfer between any two parties or ledgers. It's the glue that binds this entire system together.With the RLUSD stablecoin backed 1:1 by reserves and XRP required for all transactions, this seems to be the digital dollar framework envisioned by Trump to keep the USD dominant.The legal clarity, real-world use cases, and technology behind Ripple/XRP make it stand out in this space. It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out. What are your thoughts on the future of digital assets?Thank you to Rob and Captain Kyle. We appreciate your ruthless research, leadership and timeWhere we go one- we go all. Love, Kassandra. PS: Share with a friend. And….follow my X Threads for the most recent real world shifts. Get full access to The Light Between at thelightbetween.substack.com/subscribe
Today's guest is Shayde Christian, Chief Data & Analytics Officer at Cloudera. Founded in 2008, Cloudera believes that data can make what is impossible today, possible tomorrow. They empower people to transform complex data into clear and actionable insights. Cloudera delivers an enterprise data cloud for any data, anywhere, from the Edge to AI. Powered by the relentless innovation of the open source community, Cloudera advances digital transformation for the world's largest enterprises.Shayde leads all data and analytics functions at Cloudera, overseeing data science, machine learning, business intelligence, data architecture, data engineering, platform engineering and DevOps. He helps customers navigate their hybrid cloud migration and optimization journeys. Shayde has built or revitalized six enterprise data analytics organizations for Fortune 500 companies, global tech firms and startups.In this episode, Shayde talks about:His unique career journey, following passions and pursuing a true calling,How Cloudera evolved beyond Hadoop, pioneering AI-driven data solutions,Driving success through secure AI, data quality and feedback,Scalability, ROI, killer apps and AI-driven automation,Why attracting AI talent is hard; teams bootstrap skills internally,Why Cloudera is a great place to work with a focus on innovation and purpose,How his team aims to bridge the tech-business gap using AI,Leading the software evolution, investing in generative AI for success
Stephan chats with Steven Roose, CEO of SecondBTC, about Ark, a new Layer 2 solution for Bitcoin that aims to simplify self-custodial payments. They discuss the challenges of onboarding new users to Bitcoin, the unique features of Ark compared to other solutions like Liquid and Cashu, and the importance of maintaining user control over funds. The conversation also touches on the recent Signet launch, scalability concerns, and practical use cases for Ark in facilitating Bitcoin transactions. Steven also explores future plans for the Mainnet launch, the possibility of competing ARC servers, and the implications of CTV and CheckSig from Stack on efficiency gains in the Bitcoin ecosystem.Takeaways
Kortney Harmon sits down with Clark Wilcox, founder of The Digital Recruiter, to explore the transformative power of LinkedIn in modern sales marketing strategies—especially for recruiting businesses. Together, they dive into the benefits of LinkedIn as the top B2B platform, the evolution of digital recruiting, and how recruiters can leverage modern tools to build meaningful relationships and scale their agencies effectively. No matter where you are in your recruiting journey, this conversation is packed with actionable strategies to help you stay ahead in the ever-evolving talent industry. Clark offers valuable insights on leveraging LinkedIn, building meaningful connections, and creating a systemized digital approach that drives real results. Tune in to gain a comprehensive understanding from a true industry expert and discover actionable insights to drive your staffing strategy forward.________________Follow Clark on LinkedIn: LinkedIn | Clark WilcoxCheck out The Digital Recruiter Website hereListen to The Digital Recruiter Podcast hereWant to learn more about Crelate? Book a demo hereFollow Crelate on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/crelate/Subscribe to our newsletter: https://www.crelate.com/blog/full-desk-experience
In this episode of The New Quantum Era, host Sebastian Hassinger interviews Professor Will Oliver from MIT about the advancements in fluxonium qubits. The discussion delves into the unique features of fluxonium qubits compared to traditional transmon qubits, highlighting their potential for high fidelity operations and scalability. Oliver shares insights from recent experiments at MIT, where his team achieved nearly five nines fidelity in single-qubit gates, and discusses how these qubits could be scaled up for larger quantum computing architectures through innovative control systems.Major Points Covered:Fluxonium vs. Transmon Qubits: Fluxonium qubits have a double-well potential, unlike the harmonic oscillator-like potential of transmon qubits. This design allows for high anharmonicity, which is beneficial for reducing leakage to higher energy levels during operations.High Fidelity Operations: The MIT team achieved high fidelity in both single and two-qubit gates using fluxonium qubits. For single qubits, they reached nearly five nines fidelity, and for two-qubit gates, they achieved fidelities around 99.92%.Scalability and Cost Reduction: Fluxonium qubits operate at lower frequencies, which could enable the integration of control electronics at cryogenic temperatures, reducing costs and increasing scalability. This approach is being developed by Atlantic Quantum, a startup spun out of Oliver's research groupFuture Directions: The goal is to implement surface code error correction with fluxonium qubits, which could lead to efficient production of logical qubits due to their high fidelity operationsThis episode brought to you with support from APS and from Quantum Machines, a big thank you to both organizations!
Send us a textIn this engaging episode of the Customer Success Playbook Podcast, host Kevin Metzger sits down with Gilad Shriki from The Scope to explore how FunnelStory is transforming customer success operations. With seamless integration capabilities and a robust automation-first approach, FunnelStory is setting a new standard for customer success platforms.Gilad shares insights into how his team successfully integrated FunnelStory with BigQuery, HubSpot, and Segment, all while maintaining strict data privacy protocols. He also discusses how AI-driven automation is enhancing customer sentiment analysis and churn prediction, giving CS teams an edge in proactive engagement.Is Funnel Story truly a one-stop shop for customer success? Can businesses of all sizes leverage its automation without sacrificing human interaction? Listen in as Gilad provides a firsthand account of his experience and why he believes FunnelStory is reshaping the future of customer success management.Detailed Episode Insights:Seamless Integration: How The Scope connected FunnelStory with their existing data stack while maintaining PII privacy.Automation at the Core: Why starting with automation before layering in human interaction changes the game for CS teams.AI-Powered Efficiency: How FunnelStory is accelerating time-to-value and making predictive insights more accessible.Scalability & Growth: Can FunnelStory support businesses up to $500M in revenue? Gilad shares his perspective.The Future of CS Tech: What's next for AI-powered customer success platforms?Now you can interact with us directly by leaving a voice message at https://www.speakpipe.com/CustomerSuccessPlaybookPlease Like, Comment, Share and Subscribe. You can also find the CS Playbook Podcast:YouTube - @CustomerSuccessPlaybookPodcastTwitter - @CS_PlaybookYou can find Kevin at:Metzgerbusiness.com - Kevin's person web siteKevin Metzger on Linked In.You can find Roman at:Roman Trebon on Linked In.
Check out The Link.AI Consulting at https://agentic.constructionConnect with Hugh on LinkedinHere's a shorter briefing based on the same informationExecutive Summary:Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP), announced in late November 2024, is an open protocol designed to standardize how AI systems interact with external data sources and tools. It aims to overcome the current fragmented landscape of AI integration, where bespoke solutions are often required for each new connection. MCP establishes a universal framework for communication, simplifying development, enhancing AI agent effectiveness through improved context and tool access, and fostering a vibrant ecosystem of AI capabilities. By utilizing a client-server architecture and defining key primitives for data and action exchange, MCP offers a more dynamic and context-aware approach compared to traditional REST APIs. The emergence of MCP registries and marketplaces like smithery.ai further signifies its potential to transform the future of AI by enabling more interconnected, adaptable, and powerful AI systems.Key Themes and Important Ideas/Facts:1. Addressing the Challenges of AI Integration:The current method of integrating AI models with external resources is often complex and requires custom solutions for each connection. "When building AI applications today, each project frequently requires unique, bespoke solutions for how AI processes are constructed and how they connect with necessary data resources." (Introduction)This leads to significant development and maintenance burdens.MCP aims to solve this by providing a universal, open standard for connecting AI systems with data sources and tools. "MCP offers a unified solution to this problem by providing a universal, open standard for connecting AI systems with data sources, effectively replacing these fragmented integrations with a single, consistent protocol." (Introduction)The motivation is to overcome the limitations of isolated AI models "trapped behind information silos and legacy systems." (Introduction, citing source 2)MCP addresses the "MxN problem" by transforming it into an "N plus M setup," where each model and tool only needs to conform to the standard once. "Without a standardized protocol, this results in a complex web of M multiplied by N individual integrations... MCP's approach transforms this into a much simpler N plus M setup, where each tool and each model only needs to conform to the MCP standard once..." (Introduction, citing source 3)By open-sourcing MCP, Anthropic intends to foster collaboration and a shared ecosystem.2. Core Concepts of MCP:Client-Server Architecture: MCP is built on this established pattern. "At its core, the Model Context Protocol (MCP) is built upon a client-server architecture, a well-established design pattern in computing, to facilitate the connection between AI models and external resources." (Core Concepts)Host: The AI-powered application or agent environment the user interacts with (e.g., Claude desktop app, IDE plugin). "The Host is the AI-powered application or agent environment that the end-user directly interacts with." (Core Concepts) It can connect to multiple MCP servers and manages client permissions.Client: An intermediary within the Host that manages the connection to a single MCP server, maintaining a one-to-one link. "The Client acts as an intermediary within the Host, responsible for managing the connection to a single MCP server." (Core Concepts) It handles communication lifecycle and maintains stateful sessions.Server: An external program that implements MCP and provides capabilities (tools, data, prompts) for a specific domain (e.g., databases, cloud services). "The Server is a program, typically external to the AI model itself, that implements the MCP standard and provides a specific set of capabilities." (Core Concepts) Anthropic and the community have released servers for Google Drive, Slack, GitHub, Postgres, SQLite, and web browsing.This architecture is likened to a "USB port" for AI. "This client-server architecture, often likened to a 'USB port' for AI applications, provides a standardized way for AI assistants to 'plug into' any data source or service without requiring custom code for each connection." (Core Concepts, citing source 3)3. MCP vs. REST APIs for AI Agents:Limitations of REST APIs: Require significant manual effort, lack standardized context management, often stateless, static API definitions. "Integrating AI agents with external services via REST APIs often requires significant manual effort and lacks a standardized way to manage the evolving context of agent interactions." (MCP vs. REST APIs for AI Agents)Advantages of MCP:Standardized Communication: Based on JSON-RPC, simplifying integration.Dynamic Tool Discovery: AI can query servers to understand available tools. "AI models equipped with an MCP client can query connected servers to understand the tools and resources they offer." (MCP vs. REST APIs for AI Agents)Two-Way Real-Time Interaction: Supports persistent connections for context updates.Superior Approach Scenarios: Complex workflows with multiple tools, real-time data integration, frequently changing toolsets, intelligent assistants, automated coding tools, dynamic data analytics.4. Enhancing AI Agent Effectiveness:Improved Contextual Awareness and Management: MCP allows agents to access and retain relevant context from multiple sources, overcoming context window limitations. "One of the most significant ways in which the Model Context Protocol enhances the effectiveness of AI agents is by enabling improved contextual awareness and management." (Enhancing AI Agent Effectiveness)The ability to connect to multiple servers simultaneously supports complex workflows.The "Resources" primitive provides just-in-time, modular context, leading to more efficient processing and accurate responses.Facilitating Seamless Integration: MCP eliminates the need for custom code for each new data source or tool. "By providing a standardized interface, MCP eliminates the need for developers to write custom code for each new data source or tool that an AI agent needs to interact with." (Enhancing AI Agent Effectiveness)Pre-built servers for popular systems (Google Drive, Slack, GitHub, databases) streamline integration.Supporting Advanced Reasoning and Decision-Making: The "Tools" primitive allows agents to invoke functions and access real-time data.The "Sampling" primitive enables complex, multi-step reasoning processes (with recommended human approval).Real-World Examples:Corporate chatbots querying multiple internal systems.AI-powered coding assistants (Sourcegraph Cody, Zed Editor) accessing codebases.Anthropic's Claude Desktop accessing local files. "By integrating MCP, Claude can securely access local files, applications, and services on the user's computer." (Enhancing AI Agent Effectiveness)AI2SQL generating SQL from natural language.Apify allowing AI agents to access Apify Actors for automation.5. Driving Adoption for AI Tool Providers:Standardized Integration: Reduces the complexity and costs of developing and maintaining multiple custom integrations. "By providing a single, open standard for connecting AI models with tools, MCP reduces the need for tool providers to develop and maintain multiple custom integrations tailored to different AI platforms." (Driving Adoption for AI Tool Providers)Increased Interoperability: Tools can work with any MCP-compatible AI model, broadening the potential user base and reducing vendor lock-in. "Tools built using the MCP standard can seamlessly work with any AI model that has implemented an MCP client, regardless of the AI provider (e.g., Anthropic, OpenAI) or whether it's an open-source model." (Driving Adoption for AI Tool Providers)Opportunities for Innovation and Specialization: Enables developers to create specialized servers that can be accessed by any MCP client, fostering a division of labor.Benefits for Scalability and Future-Proofing: Ensures integrations remain compatible with future AI models adhering to the standard.6. Real-World Use Cases and Examples of MCP Implementation (Detailed):Coding Assistants: Sourcegraph Cody and Zed Editor.Enterprise Integrations: Block and Apollo. "Companies like Block and Apollo have adopted MCP to securely connect their AI systems with internal data repositories and customer relationship management (CRM) systems." (Real-World Use Cases and Examples of MCP Implementation)Desktop AI Applications: Anthropic's Claude Desktop.Data Querying Tools: AI2SQL.Automation Platforms: Apify.Community-Built Servers: Numerous servers on platforms like Smithery.ai and mcp-get.com for databases, cloud services, etc.7. Future Implications and the Evolving AI Ecosystem:Fostering Interoperability and Standardization: MCP has the potential to become a universal standard for AI integration. "By establishing a universal standard for AI integration, MCP could become the equivalent of HTTP for the web or USB-C for device connectivity in the AI world." (Future Implications and the Evolving AI Ecosystem)Could decouple AI model choice from underlying integrations.Potential Impact on AI R&D and Deployment: May shift focus towards effective utilization of external information over solely increasing model size. Could lead to more modular AI system designs.Addressing Potential Challenges: Requires buy-in from AI providers and tool developers. Security is paramount. Ensuring user trust and human oversight are crucial. "Security is another paramount concern. Allowing AI agents to access and interact with external systems, especially sensitive enterprise data, necessitates robust security measures to prevent unauthorized access or data leaks." (Future Implications and the Evolving AI Ecosystem)Conclusion:MCP offers a promising path towards a more interconnected, context-aware, and effective AI ecosystem. Its standardized framework addresses critical integration challenges, enhances AI agent capabilities, and provides new opportunities for tool providers and the broader AI community. While adoption challenges exist, the potential transformative impact of MCP on the future of AI is significant.
Guy Royse, dev advocate at Redis, discusses going beyond the cache with Redis and Node.js. He explores its capabilities as a memory-first database, session management, and even fun use cases like the Bigfoot Tracker API. He also shares insights on Redis OM for object mapping and its future in the JavaScript ecosystem. Links http://guyroyse.com http://github.com/guyroyse https://www.twitch.tv/guyroyse https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNt5SDc6LosO41E77jr59cQ https://x.com/guyroyse https://www.linkedin.com/in/groyse https://2024.connect.tech/session/693665 We want to hear from you! How did you find us? Did you see us on Twitter? In a newsletter? Or maybe we were recommended by a friend? Let us know by sending an email to our producer, Emily, at emily.kochanekketner@logrocket.com (mailto:emily.kochanekketner@logrocket.com), or tweet at us at PodRocketPod (https://twitter.com/PodRocketpod). Follow us. Get free stickers. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, fill out this form (https://podrocket.logrocket.com/get-podrocket-stickers), and we'll send you free PodRocket stickers! What does LogRocket do? LogRocket provides AI-first session replay and analytics that surfaces the UX and technical issues impacting user experiences. Start understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at [LogRocket.com]. Try LogRocket for free today.(https://logrocket.com/signup/?pdr) Special Guest: Guy Royse.
Generally, the definition of success may vary, but in the world of dentistry, patient care, profitability and operational excellence are measures of success that every business is trying to achieve. In the latest episode of The Dental Economist Show, host Mike Huffaker welcomes Eric Pastan, Director, Skytale Group, and a former DSO owner, who scaled his business to 45 locations. Together, they take from Pastan's wealth of experience to explore the critical elements of successful dental organization growth. From insights on maintaining clinical excellence while scaling operations to the importance of data analysis done right, and how to prepare your organization for eventual transactions, this episode highlights the keys to dental success, in today's day and age. Tune in to discover how, sometimes, the best path to growth starts with sitting at the front desk!
Dr. Will Deyamport III: Edupreneur | Speaker | ConsultantDr. Will Deyamport III is a force in digital learning, edupreneurship, and instructional technology. As the visionary behind The Dr. Will Show Podcast, the author of The Edupreneur, and a sought-after consultant, he empowers educators to leverage their expertise beyond the classroom and build sustainable businesses.With a deep background in technology leadership, systems thinking, and change management, Dr. Will has played a pivotal role in one-to-one device rollouts, preparing teachers for virtual learning, and optimizing LMS strategies for seamless instruction. His work isn't about tech for tech's sake—it's about transformation.Through his coaching, speaking engagements, and content, Dr. Will teaches educators how to monetize their knowledge, elevate their impact, and take control of their financial futures. If you're ready to turn your skills into a thriving business, he's the guide you need.__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Edupreneur: Your Blueprint To Jumpstart And Scale Your Education Business You've spent years in the classroom, leading PD, designing curriculum, and transforming how students learn. Now, it's time to leverage that experience and build something for yourself. The Edupreneur isn't just another book—it's the playbook for educators who want to take their knowledge beyond the school walls and into a thriving business.I wrote this book because I've been where you are. I know what it's like to have the skills, the passion, and the drive but not know where to start. I break it all down—the mindset shifts, the business models, the pricing strategies, and the branding moves that will help you position yourself as a leader in this space.Inside, you'll learn how to:✅ Turn your expertise into income streams—without feeling like a sellout✅ Build a personal brand that commands respect (and top dollar)✅ Market your work in a way that feels natural and impactful✅ Navigate the business side of edupreneurship, from pricing to partnershipsWhether you want to consult, create courses, write books, or launch a podcast, this book will help you get there. Stop waiting for permission. Start building your own table.
In this episode, I'm excited for you to hear how Scalability student Jade scaled to $10k months. We'll dive into how Jade has scaled from $2k and $3k to several $10k months using what she learned in Scalability.Jade is a social media strategist and manager who helps entrepreneurs turn their content into real business growth, not just likes and views. She's worked with clients across various industries, from online service providers to brick-and-mortar stores and hair salons, helping them increase website traffic, generate leads, and boost sales through strategic social media marketing. In today's episode, we cover:The struggles she faced before joining ScalabilityHow lessening the number of offers led to more successHow she finds leadsHow she changed pricing to reflect the quality of her servicesWays she leveled up the client experienceHow she stands out to gain and retain clientsThe mindset shifts that have helped her focus and maintain sustainability in her business Connect with Jade: Follow on Instagram @jade.mc.neilVisit her website Connect with Mya:Follow on Instagram @myanicholJoin my email listCheck out my websiteNow on YouTubeMake sure to hit subscribe/follow so you never miss an episode!Some of the links mentioned are affiliate links, which help to support this podcast at no additional cost to you.Find the complete show notes here: https://myanichol.com/2025/03/11/10k-months/Resources & Links:The Online Blueprint150 Free HooksList Building 101ManychatIG UniversityKajabi 30-day free trial + 20 free story templates
ORDER OUR BOOK OUT: HERE Take the INSTINCTS ASSESSMENT www.theartofgrowth.org Email us your thoughts and questions! Follow us on Instagram at ArtofGrowth for more on this subject this month and let us know what you are doing. Go to our website to sign up for:Corporate Training One-on-one coaching Enneagram Certification AND MORE...Support the showhttps://www.theartofgrowth.org/
Sponsors:• ◦ Visit Buildertrend to get a 60-day money-back guarantee on your Buildertrend account• ◦ Marvin Windows and Doors• ◦ Sub-Zero Wolf Cove Showroom PhoenixConnect with Lou Olerio:https://oleriohomes.comConnect with Brad Leavitt:Website | Instagram | Facebook | Houzz | Pinterest | YouTube
Phase 1 of Brazil's ambitious Drex CBDC pilot is in the books. The project has proven successful thus far, but privacy and scalability challenges remain - prompting the Central Bank to conclude that a "major adaptation" is required for Drex to become a core piece of Brazil's financial infrastructure.In this episode, Marcos Viriato of Parfin, Leandro Pereira of Nuclea, Ricardo Paixão of CRIA (and the Brazilian Congress), join host Aaron Stanley to explore the findings of an extensive new report published by the bank to conclude Phase 1.They provide an insider perspective on the road ahead for Drex as Brazil continues its push towards a tokenized financial system. 00:03 - Introduction and market expectations 03:06 - DREX project explanation and objectives 05:36 - Analysis of the Central Bank's technical report09:26 - The privacy challenge explained13:56 - The Drex Trilemma17:25 - Scalability considerations22:24 - Discussion of Hyperledger Besu infrastructure27:47 - Sponsor break29:20 - Second phase pilot and resource constraints36:14 - Current use cases and integration challenges48:00 - Market outlook and tokenization beyond DREX-------------------------------------------------------------------Binance is the largest platform for trading of digital assets. With over 250 million users around the world, the exchange offers over 350 trading pairs, best-in-class products and services for investors, and advanced tools for institutions players.Binance currently holds over US$ 160 billion in user assets under custody and reached a cumulative historical trading volume of $100 trillion in 2024, showcasing the trust placed in it by users worldwide.With user-focus at the core of its DNA, Binance continuously invests to increase usability, bring new features and deepen security.Liquidity matters. Security is non-negotiable. Join Binance Now----------------------------------------------------------------
In this conversation, Xavier Rio discusses the transformative impact of generative AI on operational productivity and scalability. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the specific problems AI aims to solve and the value it brings to the organization.TakeawaysGenerative AI is crucial for productivity and scalability.Understanding the purpose of AI is essential.AI should not be implemented for its own sake.The focus should be on solving real problems.Content creation is a significant area for AI application.AI can enhance operational efficiency.Defining the added value of technology is key.Generative AI can transform product content creation.The integration of AI requires clear objectives.AI's role should align with business goals.Sound Bites"Generative AI will be a key element on productivity""What is the added value of the technology?"Chapters00:00Introduction to E-commerce Leadership05:523M's Vision and E-commerce Strategy07:24Innovation in B2B E-commerce11:28The Evolution of Omnichannel Strategies13:49The Role of Video in B2B Communication16:03Generational Shifts in B2B Buying Behavior17:213M's Growth Channels and Sustainability Initiatives19:10Global Insights and Regional Adaptation20:08Implementing the Digital Shelf21:42AI's Impact on E-commerce Solutions23:43Future Trends in E-commerce26:14B2B Sales Cycles and Promotional Events28:21Innovative Products for the Future
Is it better to invest in single-family homes or small multifamily properties? In this episode, Ron Phillips breaks down the pros and cons of single-family homes vs. duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes, helping investors determine which fits their strategy best. He covers key factors like financing, appreciation potential, tenant demand, and scalability, offering expert insights from years of experience in the real estate investment space. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE Key Differences between single-family homes and small multifamily properties Appreciation vs. Cash Flow: Why single-family homes tend to appreciate faster, while multifamily properties can offer better stability How multifamily properties help reduce 100% vacancy scenarios common with single-family homes Strategy to maximize conventional financing and why it's often the best lending option for small investors Different property types align with various investor goals and risk tolerances. CONNECT WITH US: If you need help with anything in real estate, please email invest@rpcinvest.com Reach Ron: RP Capital Leave podcast reviews and topic suggestions: iTunes Subscribe and get additional info: Get Real Estate Success Facebook Group: Cash Flow Property Facebook Community Instagram: @ronphillips_ YouTube: RpCapital Get the latest trends and insights: RP Capital Newsletter
Show DescriptionUI and state struggles, AI missing important sand context, should we look forward to AI browsers, how bad is the mobile web in 2025, what does scalability with websites actually mean, and is there a role for someone as a project manager with tech insight? Listen on Website →Links Dribbble - Discover the World's Top Designers & Creative Professionals UI = f(statesⁿ) - daverupert.com Welcome to Steam Thoughts on embedding alternative text metadata into images – Eric Bailey The Browser Company | Building Arc Dia from The Browser Company Perplexity teases a web browser called Comet | TechCrunch Introducing Operator | OpenAI Daring Fireball: One Bit of Anecdata That the Web Is Languishing Vis-à-Vis Native Mobile Apps Sill | Top news shared by the people you trust Sponsors
An airhacks.fm conversation with Francesco Nigro (@forked_franz) about: Netty committer and performance engineer at Red Hat, discussion of Netty's history, focus on low-level core components like buffers and allocators in Netty, relationship between Vert.x and Netty where Vert.x provides a more opinionated and user-friendly abstraction over Netty, explanation of reactive back pressure implementation in Vert.x, performance advantages of Vert.x over Netty due to batching and reactive design, detailed explanation of IO_uring as a Linux-specific asynchronous I/O mechanism, comparison between event loop architecture and Project Loom for scalability, limitations of Loom when working with IO_uring due to design incompatibilities, discovery of a major Java type system scalability issue related to instance-of checks against interfaces, explanation of how this issue affected Hibernate performance, deep investigation using assembly-level analysis to identify the root cause, collaboration with Andrew Haley to fix the 20-year-old JDK issue, performance improvements of 2-3x after fixing the issue, discussion of CPU cache coherency problems in NUMA architectures, explanation of how container environments like kubernetes can worsen performance issues due to CPU scheduling, insights into how modern CPUs handle branch prediction and speculation, impact of branch misprediction on performance especially with memory access patterns, discussion of memory bandwidth limitations in AI/ML workloads, advantages of unified memory architectures like Apple M-series chips for AI inference Francesco Nigro on twitter: @forked_franz
Today's episode is with Paul Klein, founder of Browserbase. We talked about building browser infrastructure for AI agents, the future of agent authentication, and their open source framework Stagehand.* [00:00:00] Introductions* [00:04:46] AI-specific challenges in browser infrastructure* [00:07:05] Multimodality in AI-Powered Browsing* [00:12:26] Running headless browsers at scale* [00:18:46] Geolocation when proxying* [00:21:25] CAPTCHAs and Agent Auth* [00:28:21] Building “User take over” functionality* [00:33:43] Stagehand: AI web browsing framework* [00:38:58] OpenAI's Operator and computer use agents* [00:44:44] Surprising use cases of Browserbase* [00:47:18] Future of browser automation and market competition* [00:53:11] Being a solo founderTranscriptAlessio [00:00:04]: Hey everyone, welcome to the Latent Space podcast. This is Alessio, partner and CTO at Decibel Partners, and I'm joined by my co-host Swyx, founder of Smol.ai.swyx [00:00:12]: Hey, and today we are very blessed to have our friends, Paul Klein, for the fourth, the fourth, CEO of Browserbase. Welcome.Paul [00:00:21]: Thanks guys. Yeah, I'm happy to be here. I've been lucky to know both of you for like a couple of years now, I think. So it's just like we're hanging out, you know, with three ginormous microphones in front of our face. It's totally normal hangout.swyx [00:00:34]: Yeah. We've actually mentioned you on the podcast, I think, more often than any other Solaris tenant. Just because like you're one of the, you know, best performing, I think, LLM tool companies that have started up in the last couple of years.Paul [00:00:50]: Yeah, I mean, it's been a whirlwind of a year, like Browserbase is actually pretty close to our first birthday. So we are one years old. And going from, you know, starting a company as a solo founder to... To, you know, having a team of 20 people, you know, a series A, but also being able to support hundreds of AI companies that are building AI applications that go out and automate the web. It's just been like, really cool. It's been happening a little too fast. I think like collectively as an AI industry, let's just take a week off together. I took my first vacation actually two weeks ago, and Operator came out on the first day, and then a week later, DeepSeat came out. And I'm like on vacation trying to chill. I'm like, we got to build with this stuff, right? So it's been a breakneck year. But I'm super happy to be here and like talk more about all the stuff we're seeing. And I'd love to hear kind of what you guys are excited about too, and share with it, you know?swyx [00:01:39]: Where to start? So people, you've done a bunch of podcasts. I think I strongly recommend Jack Bridger's Scaling DevTools, as well as Turner Novak's The Peel. And, you know, I'm sure there's others. So you covered your Twilio story in the past, talked about StreamClub, you got acquired to Mux, and then you left to start Browserbase. So maybe we just start with what is Browserbase? Yeah.Paul [00:02:02]: Browserbase is the web browser for your AI. We're building headless browser infrastructure, which are browsers that run in a server environment that's accessible to developers via APIs and SDKs. It's really hard to run a web browser in the cloud. You guys are probably running Chrome on your computers, and that's using a lot of resources, right? So if you want to run a web browser or thousands of web browsers, you can't just spin up a bunch of lambdas. You actually need to use a secure containerized environment. You have to scale it up and down. It's a stateful system. And that infrastructure is, like, super painful. And I know that firsthand, because at my last company, StreamClub, I was CTO, and I was building our own internal headless browser infrastructure. That's actually why we sold the company, is because Mux really wanted to buy our headless browser infrastructure that we'd built. And it's just a super hard problem. And I actually told my co-founders, I would never start another company unless it was a browser infrastructure company. And it turns out that's really necessary in the age of AI, when AI can actually go out and interact with websites, click on buttons, fill in forms. You need AI to do all of that work in an actual browser running somewhere on a server. And BrowserBase powers that.swyx [00:03:08]: While you're talking about it, it occurred to me, not that you're going to be acquired or anything, but it occurred to me that it would be really funny if you became the Nikita Beer of headless browser companies. You just have one trick, and you make browser companies that get acquired.Paul [00:03:23]: I truly do only have one trick. I'm screwed if it's not for headless browsers. I'm not a Go programmer. You know, I'm in AI grant. You know, browsers is an AI grant. But we were the only company in that AI grant batch that used zero dollars on AI spend. You know, we're purely an infrastructure company. So as much as people want to ask me about reinforcement learning, I might not be the best guy to talk about that. But if you want to ask about headless browser infrastructure at scale, I can talk your ear off. So that's really my area of expertise. And it's a pretty niche thing. Like, nobody has done what we're doing at scale before. So we're happy to be the experts.swyx [00:03:59]: You do have an AI thing, stagehand. We can talk about the sort of core of browser-based first, and then maybe stagehand. Yeah, stagehand is kind of the web browsing framework. Yeah.What is Browserbase? Headless Browser Infrastructure ExplainedAlessio [00:04:10]: Yeah. Yeah. And maybe how you got to browser-based and what problems you saw. So one of the first things I worked on as a software engineer was integration testing. Sauce Labs was kind of like the main thing at the time. And then we had Selenium, we had Playbrite, we had all these different browser things. But it's always been super hard to do. So obviously you've worked on this before. When you started browser-based, what were the challenges? What were the AI-specific challenges that you saw versus, there's kind of like all the usual running browser at scale in the cloud, which has been a problem for years. What are like the AI unique things that you saw that like traditional purchase just didn't cover? Yeah.AI-specific challenges in browser infrastructurePaul [00:04:46]: First and foremost, I think back to like the first thing I did as a developer, like as a kid when I was writing code, I wanted to write code that did stuff for me. You know, I wanted to write code to automate my life. And I do that probably by using curl or beautiful soup to fetch data from a web browser. And I think I still do that now that I'm in the cloud. And the other thing that I think is a huge challenge for me is that you can't just create a web site and parse that data. And we all know that now like, you know, taking HTML and plugging that into an LLM, you can extract insights, you can summarize. So it was very clear that now like dynamic web scraping became very possible with the rise of large language models or a lot easier. And that was like a clear reason why there's been more usage of headless browsers, which are necessary because a lot of modern websites don't expose all of their page content via a simple HTTP request. You know, they actually do require you to run this type of code for a specific time. JavaScript on the page to hydrate this. Airbnb is a great example. You go to airbnb.com. A lot of that content on the page isn't there until after they run the initial hydration. So you can't just scrape it with a curl. You need to have some JavaScript run. And a browser is that JavaScript engine that's going to actually run all those requests on the page. So web data retrieval was definitely one driver of starting BrowserBase and the rise of being able to summarize that within LLM. Also, I was familiar with if I wanted to automate a website, I could write one script and that would work for one website. It was very static and deterministic. But the web is non-deterministic. The web is always changing. And until we had LLMs, there was no way to write scripts that you could write once that would run on any website. That would change with the structure of the website. Click the login button. It could mean something different on many different websites. And LLMs allow us to generate code on the fly to actually control that. So I think that rise of writing the generic automation scripts that can work on many different websites, to me, made it clear that browsers are going to be a lot more useful because now you can automate a lot more things without writing. If you wanted to write a script to book a demo call on 100 websites, previously, you had to write 100 scripts. Now you write one script that uses LLMs to generate that script. That's why we built our web browsing framework, StageHand, which does a lot of that work for you. But those two things, web data collection and then enhanced automation of many different websites, it just felt like big drivers for more browser infrastructure that would be required to power these kinds of features.Alessio [00:07:05]: And was multimodality also a big thing?Paul [00:07:08]: Now you can use the LLMs to look, even though the text in the dome might not be as friendly. Maybe my hot take is I was always kind of like, I didn't think vision would be as big of a driver. For UI automation, I felt like, you know, HTML is structured text and large language models are good with structured text. But it's clear that these computer use models are often vision driven, and they've been really pushing things forward. So definitely being multimodal, like rendering the page is required to take a screenshot to give that to a computer use model to take actions on a website. And it's just another win for browser. But I'll be honest, that wasn't what I was thinking early on. I didn't even think that we'd get here so fast with multimodality. I think we're going to have to get back to multimodal and vision models.swyx [00:07:50]: This is one of those things where I forgot to mention in my intro that I'm an investor in Browserbase. And I remember that when you pitched to me, like a lot of the stuff that we have today, we like wasn't on the original conversation. But I did have my original thesis was something that we've talked about on the podcast before, which is take the GPT store, the custom GPT store, all the every single checkbox and plugin is effectively a startup. And this was the browser one. I think the main hesitation, I think I actually took a while to get back to you. The main hesitation was that there were others. Like you're not the first hit list browser startup. It's not even your first hit list browser startup. There's always a question of like, will you be the category winner in a place where there's a bunch of incumbents, to be honest, that are bigger than you? They're just not targeted at the AI space. They don't have the backing of Nat Friedman. And there's a bunch of like, you're here in Silicon Valley. They're not. I don't know.Paul [00:08:47]: I don't know if that's, that was it, but like, there was a, yeah, I mean, like, I think I tried all the other ones and I was like, really disappointed. Like my background is from working at great developer tools, companies, and nothing had like the Vercel like experience. Um, like our biggest competitor actually is partly owned by private equity and they just jacked up their prices quite a bit. And the dashboard hasn't changed in five years. And I actually used them at my last company and tried them and I was like, oh man, like there really just needs to be something that's like the experience of these great infrastructure companies, like Stripe, like clerk, like Vercel that I use in love, but oriented towards this kind of like more specific category, which is browser infrastructure, which is really technically complex. Like a lot of stuff can go wrong on the internet when you're running a browser. The internet is very vast. There's a lot of different configurations. Like there's still websites that only work with internet explorer out there. How do you handle that when you're running your own browser infrastructure? These are the problems that we have to think about and solve at BrowserBase. And it's, it's certainly a labor of love, but I built this for me, first and foremost, I know it's super cheesy and everyone says that for like their startups, but it really, truly was for me. If you look at like the talks I've done even before BrowserBase, and I'm just like really excited to try and build a category defining infrastructure company. And it's, it's rare to have a new category of infrastructure exists. We're here in the Chroma offices and like, you know, vector databases is a new category of infrastructure. Is it, is it, I mean, we can, we're in their office, so, you know, we can, we can debate that one later. That is one.Multimodality in AI-Powered Browsingswyx [00:10:16]: That's one of the industry debates.Paul [00:10:17]: I guess we go back to the LLMOS talk that Karpathy gave way long ago. And like the browser box was very clearly there and it seemed like the people who were building in this space also agreed that browsers are a core primitive of infrastructure for the LLMOS that's going to exist in the future. And nobody was building something there that I wanted to use. So I had to go build it myself.swyx [00:10:38]: Yeah. I mean, exactly that talk that, that honestly, that diagram, every box is a startup and there's the code box and then there's the. The browser box. I think at some point they will start clashing there. There's always the question of the, are you a point solution or are you the sort of all in one? And I think the point solutions tend to win quickly, but then the only ones have a very tight cohesive experience. Yeah. Let's talk about just the hard problems of browser base you have on your website, which is beautiful. Thank you. Was there an agency that you used for that? Yeah. Herb.paris.Paul [00:11:11]: They're amazing. Herb.paris. Yeah. It's H-E-R-V-E. I highly recommend for developers. Developer tools, founders to work with consumer agencies because they end up building beautiful things and the Parisians know how to build beautiful interfaces. So I got to give prep.swyx [00:11:24]: And chat apps, apparently are, they are very fast. Oh yeah. The Mistral chat. Yeah. Mistral. Yeah.Paul [00:11:31]: Late chat.swyx [00:11:31]: Late chat. And then your videos as well, it was professionally shot, right? The series A video. Yeah.Alessio [00:11:36]: Nico did the videos. He's amazing. Not the initial video that you shot at the new one. First one was Austin.Paul [00:11:41]: Another, another video pretty surprised. But yeah, I mean, like, I think when you think about how you talk about your company. You have to think about the way you present yourself. It's, you know, as a developer, you think you evaluate a company based on like the API reliability and the P 95, but a lot of developers say, is the website good? Is the message clear? Do I like trust this founder? I'm building my whole feature on. So I've tried to nail that as well as like the reliability of the infrastructure. You're right. It's very hard. And there's a lot of kind of foot guns that you run into when running headless browsers at scale. Right.Competing with Existing Headless Browser Solutionsswyx [00:12:10]: So let's pick one. You have eight features here. Seamless integration. Scalability. Fast or speed. Secure. Observable. Stealth. That's interesting. Extensible and developer first. What comes to your mind as like the top two, three hardest ones? Yeah.Running headless browsers at scalePaul [00:12:26]: I think just running headless browsers at scale is like the hardest one. And maybe can I nerd out for a second? Is that okay? I heard this is a technical audience, so I'll talk to the other nerds. Whoa. They were listening. Yeah. They're upset. They're ready. The AGI is angry. Okay. So. So how do you run a browser in the cloud? Let's start with that, right? So let's say you're using a popular browser automation framework like Puppeteer, Playwright, and Selenium. Maybe you've written a code, some code locally on your computer that opens up Google. It finds the search bar and then types in, you know, search for Latent Space and hits the search button. That script works great locally. You can see the little browser open up. You want to take that to production. You want to run the script in a cloud environment. So when your laptop is closed, your browser is doing something. The browser is doing something. Well, I, we use Amazon. You can see the little browser open up. You know, the first thing I'd reach for is probably like some sort of serverless infrastructure. I would probably try and deploy on a Lambda. But Chrome itself is too big to run on a Lambda. It's over 250 megabytes. So you can't easily start it on a Lambda. So you maybe have to use something like Lambda layers to squeeze it in there. Maybe use a different Chromium build that's lighter. And you get it on the Lambda. Great. It works. But it runs super slowly. It's because Lambdas are very like resource limited. They only run like with one vCPU. You can run one process at a time. Remember, Chromium is super beefy. It's barely running on my MacBook Air. I'm still downloading it from a pre-run. Yeah, from the test earlier, right? I'm joking. But it's big, you know? So like Lambda, it just won't work really well. Maybe it'll work, but you need something faster. Your users want something faster. Okay. Well, let's put it on a beefier instance. Let's get an EC2 server running. Let's throw Chromium on there. Great. Okay. I can, that works well with one user. But what if I want to run like 10 Chromium instances, one for each of my users? Okay. Well, I might need two EC2 instances. Maybe 10. All of a sudden, you have multiple EC2 instances. This sounds like a problem for Kubernetes and Docker, right? Now, all of a sudden, you're using ECS or EKS, the Kubernetes or container solutions by Amazon. You're spending up and down containers, and you're spending a whole engineer's time on kind of maintaining this stateful distributed system. Those are some of the worst systems to run because when it's a stateful distributed system, it means that you are bound by the connections to that thing. You have to keep the browser open while someone is working with it, right? That's just a painful architecture to run. And there's all this other little gotchas with Chromium, like Chromium, which is the open source version of Chrome, by the way. You have to install all these fonts. You want emojis working in your browsers because your vision model is looking for the emoji. You need to make sure you have the emoji fonts. You need to make sure you have all the right extensions configured, like, oh, do you want ad blocking? How do you configure that? How do you actually record all these browser sessions? Like it's a headless browser. You can't look at it. So you need to have some sort of observability. Maybe you're recording videos and storing those somewhere. It all kind of adds up to be this just giant monster piece of your project when all you wanted to do was run a lot of browsers in production for this little script to go to google.com and search. And when I see a complex distributed system, I see an opportunity to build a great infrastructure company. And we really abstract that away with Browserbase where our customers can use these existing frameworks, Playwright, Publisher, Selenium, or our own stagehand and connect to our browsers in a serverless-like way. And control them, and then just disconnect when they're done. And they don't have to think about the complex distributed system behind all of that. They just get a browser running anywhere, anytime. Really easy to connect to.swyx [00:15:55]: I'm sure you have questions. My standard question with anything, so essentially you're a serverless browser company, and there's been other serverless things that I'm familiar with in the past, serverless GPUs, serverless website hosting. That's where I come from with Netlify. One question is just like, you promised to spin up thousands of servers. You promised to spin up thousands of browsers in milliseconds. I feel like there's no real solution that does that yet. And I'm just kind of curious how. The only solution I know, which is to kind of keep a kind of warm pool of servers around, which is expensive, but maybe not so expensive because it's just CPUs. So I'm just like, you know. Yeah.Browsers as a Core Primitive in AI InfrastructurePaul [00:16:36]: You nailed it, right? I mean, how do you offer a serverless-like experience with something that is clearly not serverless, right? And the answer is, you need to be able to run... We run many browsers on single nodes. We use Kubernetes at browser base. So we have many pods that are being scheduled. We have to predictably schedule them up or down. Yes, thousands of browsers in milliseconds is the best case scenario. If you hit us with 10,000 requests, you may hit a slower cold start, right? So we've done a lot of work on predictive scaling and being able to kind of route stuff to different regions where we have multiple regions of browser base where we have different pools available. You can also pick the region you want to go to based on like lower latency, round trip, time latency. It's very important with these types of things. There's a lot of requests going over the wire. So for us, like having a VM like Firecracker powering everything under the hood allows us to be super nimble and spin things up or down really quickly with strong multi-tenancy. But in the end, this is like the complex infrastructural challenges that we have to kind of deal with at browser base. And we have a lot more stuff on our roadmap to allow customers to have more levers to pull to exchange, do you want really fast browser startup times or do you want really low costs? And if you're willing to be more flexible on that, we may be able to kind of like work better for your use cases.swyx [00:17:44]: Since you used Firecracker, shouldn't Fargate do that for you or did you have to go lower level than that? We had to go lower level than that.Paul [00:17:51]: I find this a lot with Fargate customers, which is alarming for Fargate. We used to be a giant Fargate customer. Actually, the first version of browser base was ECS and Fargate. And unfortunately, it's a great product. I think we were actually the largest Fargate customer in our region for a little while. No, what? Yeah, seriously. And unfortunately, it's a great product, but I think if you're an infrastructure company, you actually have to have a deeper level of control over these primitives. I think it's the same thing is true with databases. We've used other database providers and I think-swyx [00:18:21]: Yeah, serverless Postgres.Paul [00:18:23]: Shocker. When you're an infrastructure company, you're on the hook if any provider has an outage. And I can't tell my customers like, hey, we went down because so-and-so went down. That's not acceptable. So for us, we've really moved to bringing things internally. It's kind of opposite of what we preach. We tell our customers, don't build this in-house, but then we're like, we build a lot of stuff in-house. But I think it just really depends on what is in the critical path. We try and have deep ownership of that.Alessio [00:18:46]: On the distributed location side, how does that work for the web where you might get sort of different content in different locations, but the customer is expecting, you know, if you're in the US, I'm expecting the US version. But if you're spinning up my browser in France, I might get the French version. Yeah.Paul [00:19:02]: Yeah. That's a good question. Well, generally, like on the localization, there is a thing called locale in the browser. You can set like what your locale is. If you're like in the ENUS browser or not, but some things do IP, IP based routing. And in that case, you may want to have a proxy. Like let's say you're running something in the, in Europe, but you want to make sure you're showing up from the US. You may want to use one of our proxy features so you can turn on proxies to say like, make sure these connections always come from the United States, which is necessary too, because when you're browsing the web, you're coming from like a, you know, data center IP, and that can make things a lot harder to browse web. So we do have kind of like this proxy super network. Yeah. We have a proxy for you based on where you're going, so you can reliably automate the web. But if you get scheduled in Europe, that doesn't happen as much. We try and schedule you as close to, you know, your origin that you're trying to go to. But generally you have control over the regions you can put your browsers in. So you can specify West one or East one or Europe. We only have one region of Europe right now, actually. Yeah.Alessio [00:19:55]: What's harder, the browser or the proxy? I feel like to me, it feels like actually proxying reliably at scale. It's much harder than spending up browsers at scale. I'm curious. It's all hard.Paul [00:20:06]: It's layers of hard, right? Yeah. I think it's different levels of hard. I think the thing with the proxy infrastructure is that we work with many different web proxy providers and some are better than others. Some have good days, some have bad days. And our customers who've built browser infrastructure on their own, they have to go and deal with sketchy actors. Like first they figure out their own browser infrastructure and then they got to go buy a proxy. And it's like you can pay in Bitcoin and it just kind of feels a little sus, right? It's like you're buying drugs when you're trying to get a proxy online. We have like deep relationships with these counterparties. We're able to audit them and say, is this proxy being sourced ethically? Like it's not running on someone's TV somewhere. Is it free range? Yeah. Free range organic proxies, right? Right. We do a level of diligence. We're SOC 2. So we have to understand what is going on here. But then we're able to make sure that like we route around proxy providers not working. There's proxy providers who will just, the proxy will stop working all of a sudden. And then if you don't have redundant proxying on your own browsers, that's hard down for you or you may get some serious impacts there. With us, like we intelligently know, hey, this proxy is not working. Let's go to this one. And you can kind of build a network of multiple providers to really guarantee the best uptime for our customers. Yeah. So you don't own any proxies? We don't own any proxies. You're right. The team has been saying who wants to like take home a little proxy server, but not yet. We're not there yet. You know?swyx [00:21:25]: It's a very mature market. I don't think you should build that yourself. Like you should just be a super customer of them. Yeah. Scraping, I think, is the main use case for that. I guess. Well, that leads us into CAPTCHAs and also off, but let's talk about CAPTCHAs. You had a little spiel that you wanted to talk about CAPTCHA stuff.Challenges of Scaling Browser InfrastructurePaul [00:21:43]: Oh, yeah. I was just, I think a lot of people ask, if you're thinking about proxies, you're thinking about CAPTCHAs too. I think it's the same thing. You can go buy CAPTCHA solvers online, but it's the same buying experience. It's some sketchy website, you have to integrate it. It's not fun to buy these things and you can't really trust that the docs are bad. What Browserbase does is we integrate a bunch of different CAPTCHAs. We do some stuff in-house, but generally we just integrate with a bunch of known vendors and continually monitor and maintain these things and say, is this working or not? Can we route around it or not? These are CAPTCHA solvers. CAPTCHA solvers, yeah. Not CAPTCHA providers, CAPTCHA solvers. Yeah, sorry. CAPTCHA solvers. We really try and make sure all of that works for you. I think as a dev, if I'm buying infrastructure, I want it all to work all the time and it's important for us to provide that experience by making sure everything does work and monitoring it on our own. Yeah. Right now, the world of CAPTCHAs is tricky. I think AI agents in particular are very much ahead of the internet infrastructure. CAPTCHAs are designed to block all types of bots, but there are now good bots and bad bots. I think in the future, CAPTCHAs will be able to identify who a good bot is, hopefully via some sort of KYC. For us, we've been very lucky. We have very little to no known abuse of Browserbase because we really look into who we work with. And for certain types of CAPTCHA solving, we only allow them on certain types of plans because we want to make sure that we can know what people are doing, what their use cases are. And that's really allowed us to try and be an arbiter of good bots, which is our long term goal. I want to build great relationships with people like Cloudflare so we can agree, hey, here are these acceptable bots. We'll identify them for you and make sure we flag when they come to your website. This is a good bot, you know?Alessio [00:23:23]: I see. And Cloudflare said they want to do more of this. So they're going to set by default, if they think you're an AI bot, they're going to reject. I'm curious if you think this is something that is going to be at the browser level or I mean, the DNS level with Cloudflare seems more where it should belong. But I'm curious how you think about it.Paul [00:23:40]: I think the web's going to change. You know, I think that the Internet as we have it right now is going to change. And we all need to just accept that the cat is out of the bag. And instead of kind of like wishing the Internet was like it was in the 2000s, we can have free content line that wouldn't be scraped. It's just it's not going to happen. And instead, we should think about like, one, how can we change? How can we change the models of, you know, information being published online so people can adequately commercialize it? But two, how do we rebuild applications that expect that AI agents are going to log in on their behalf? Those are the things that are going to allow us to kind of like identify good and bad bots. And I think the team at Clerk has been doing a really good job with this on the authentication side. I actually think that auth is the biggest thing that will prevent agents from accessing stuff, not captchas. And I think there will be agent auth in the future. I don't know if it's going to happen from an individual company, but actually authentication providers that have a, you know, hidden login as agent feature, which will then you put in your email, you'll get a push notification, say like, hey, your browser-based agent wants to log into your Airbnb. You can approve that and then the agent can proceed. That really circumvents the need for captchas or logging in as you and sharing your password. I think agent auth is going to be one way we identify good bots going forward. And I think a lot of this captcha solving stuff is really short-term problems as the internet kind of reorients itself around how it's going to work with agents browsing the web, just like people do. Yeah.Managing Distributed Browser Locations and Proxiesswyx [00:24:59]: Stitch recently was on Hacker News for talking about agent experience, AX, which is a thing that Netlify is also trying to clone and coin and talk about. And we've talked about this on our previous episodes before in a sense that I actually think that's like maybe the only part of the tech stack that needs to be kind of reinvented for agents. Everything else can stay the same, CLIs, APIs, whatever. But auth, yeah, we need agent auth. And it's mostly like short-lived, like it should not, it should be a distinct, identity from the human, but paired. I almost think like in the same way that every social network should have your main profile and then your alt accounts or your Finsta, it's almost like, you know, every, every human token should be paired with the agent token and the agent token can go and do stuff on behalf of the human token, but not be presumed to be the human. Yeah.Paul [00:25:48]: It's like, it's, it's actually very similar to OAuth is what I'm thinking. And, you know, Thread from Stitch is an investor, Colin from Clerk, Octaventures, all investors in browser-based because like, I hope they solve this because they'll make browser-based submission more possible. So we don't have to overcome all these hurdles, but I think it will be an OAuth-like flow where an agent will ask to log in as you, you'll approve the scopes. Like it can book an apartment on Airbnb, but it can't like message anybody. And then, you know, the agent will have some sort of like role-based access control within an application. Yeah. I'm excited for that.swyx [00:26:16]: The tricky part is just, there's one, one layer of delegation here, which is like, you're authoring my user's user or something like that. I don't know if that's tricky or not. Does that make sense? Yeah.Paul [00:26:25]: You know, actually at Twilio, I worked on the login identity and access. Management teams, right? So like I built Twilio's login page.swyx [00:26:31]: You were an intern on that team and then you became the lead in two years? Yeah.Paul [00:26:34]: Yeah. I started as an intern in 2016 and then I was the tech lead of that team. How? That's not normal. I didn't have a life. He's not normal. Look at this guy. I didn't have a girlfriend. I just loved my job. I don't know. I applied to 500 internships for my first job and I got rejected from every single one of them except for Twilio and then eventually Amazon. And they took a shot on me and like, I was getting paid money to write code, which was my dream. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very lucky that like this coding thing worked out because I was going to be doing it regardless. And yeah, I was able to kind of spend a lot of time on a team that was growing at a company that was growing. So it informed a lot of this stuff here. I think these are problems that have been solved with like the SAML protocol with SSO. I think it's a really interesting stuff with like WebAuthn, like these different types of authentication, like schemes that you can use to authenticate people. The tooling is all there. It just needs to be tweaked a little bit to work for agents. And I think the fact that there are companies that are already. Providing authentication as a service really sets it up. Well, the thing that's hard is like reinventing the internet for agents. We don't want to rebuild the internet. That's an impossible task. And I think people often say like, well, we'll have this second layer of APIs built for agents. I'm like, we will for the top use cases, but instead of we can just tweak the internet as is, which is on the authentication side, I think we're going to be the dumb ones going forward. Unfortunately, I think AI is going to be able to do a lot of the tasks that we do online, which means that it will be able to go to websites, click buttons on our behalf and log in on our behalf too. So with this kind of like web agent future happening, I think with some small structural changes, like you said, it feels like it could all slot in really nicely with the existing internet.Handling CAPTCHAs and Agent Authenticationswyx [00:28:08]: There's one more thing, which is the, your live view iframe, which lets you take, take control. Yeah. Obviously very key for operator now, but like, was, is there anything interesting technically there or that the people like, well, people always want this.Paul [00:28:21]: It was really hard to build, you know, like, so, okay. Headless browsers, you don't see them, right. They're running. They're running in a cloud somewhere. You can't like look at them. And I just want to really make, it's a weird name. I wish we came up with a better name for this thing, but you can't see them. Right. But customers don't trust AI agents, right. At least the first pass. So what we do with our live view is that, you know, when you use browser base, you can actually embed a live view of the browser running in the cloud for your customer to see it working. And that's what the first reason is the build trust, like, okay, so I have this script. That's going to go automate a website. I can embed it into my web application via an iframe and my customer can watch. I think. And then we added two way communication. So now not only can you watch the browser kind of being operated by AI, if you want to pause and actually click around type within this iframe that's controlling a browser, that's also possible. And this is all thanks to some of the lower level protocol, which is called the Chrome DevTools protocol. It has a API called start screencast, and you can also send mouse clicks and button clicks to a remote browser. And this is all embeddable within iframes. You have a browser within a browser, yo. And then you simulate the screen, the click on the other side. Exactly. And this is really nice often for, like, let's say, a capture that can't be solved. You saw this with Operator, you know, Operator actually uses a different approach. They use VNC. So, you know, you're able to see, like, you're seeing the whole window here. What we're doing is something a little lower level with the Chrome DevTools protocol. It's just PNGs being streamed over the wire. But the same thing is true, right? Like, hey, I'm running a window. Pause. Can you do something in this window? Human. Okay, great. Resume. Like sometimes 2FA tokens. Like if you get that text message, you might need a person to type that in. Web agents need human-in-the-loop type workflows still. You still need a person to interact with the browser. And building a UI to proxy that is kind of hard. You may as well just show them the whole browser and say, hey, can you finish this up for me? And then let the AI proceed on afterwards. Is there a future where I stream my current desktop to browser base? I don't think so. I think we're very much cloud infrastructure. Yeah. You know, but I think a lot of the stuff we're doing, we do want to, like, build tools. Like, you know, we'll talk about the stage and, you know, web agent framework in a second. But, like, there's a case where a lot of people are going desktop first for, you know, consumer use. And I think cloud is doing a lot of this, where I expect to see, you know, MCPs really oriented around the cloud desktop app for a reason, right? Like, I think a lot of these tools are going to run on your computer because it makes... I think it's breaking out. People are putting it on a server. Oh, really? Okay. Well, sweet. We'll see. We'll see that. I was surprised, though, wasn't I? I think that the browser company, too, with Dia Browser, it runs on your machine. You know, it's going to be...swyx [00:30:50]: What is it?Paul [00:30:51]: So, Dia Browser, as far as I understand... I used to use Arc. Yeah. I haven't used Arc. But I'm a big fan of the browser company. I think they're doing a lot of cool stuff in consumer. As far as I understand, it's a browser where you have a sidebar where you can, like, chat with it and it can control the local browser on your machine. So, if you imagine, like, what a consumer web agent is, which it lives alongside your browser, I think Google Chrome has Project Marina, I think. I almost call it Project Marinara for some reason. I don't know why. It's...swyx [00:31:17]: No, I think it's someone really likes the Waterworld. Oh, I see. The classic Kevin Costner. Yeah.Paul [00:31:22]: Okay. Project Marinara is a similar thing to the Dia Browser, in my mind, as far as I understand it. You have a browser that has an AI interface that will take over your mouse and keyboard and control the browser for you. Great for consumer use cases. But if you're building applications that rely on a browser and it's more part of a greater, like, AI app experience, you probably need something that's more like infrastructure, not a consumer app.swyx [00:31:44]: Just because I have explored a little bit in this area, do people want branching? So, I have the state. Of whatever my browser's in. And then I want, like, 100 clones of this state. Do people do that? Or...Paul [00:31:56]: People don't do it currently. Yeah. But it's definitely something we're thinking about. I think the idea of forking a browser is really cool. Technically, kind of hard. We're starting to see this in code execution, where people are, like, forking some, like, code execution, like, processes or forking some tool calls or branching tool calls. Haven't seen it at the browser level yet. But it makes sense. Like, if an AI agent is, like, using a website and it's not sure what path it wants to take to crawl this website. To find the information it's looking for. It would make sense for it to explore both paths in parallel. And that'd be a very, like... A road not taken. Yeah. And hopefully find the right answer. And then say, okay, this was actually the right one. And memorize that. And go there in the future. On the roadmap. For sure. Don't make my roadmap, please. You know?Alessio [00:32:37]: How do you actually do that? Yeah. How do you fork? I feel like the browser is so stateful for so many things.swyx [00:32:42]: Serialize the state. Restore the state. I don't know.Paul [00:32:44]: So, it's one of the reasons why we haven't done it yet. It's hard. You know? Like, to truly fork, it's actually quite difficult. The naive way is to open the same page in a new tab and then, like, hope that it's at the same thing. But if you have a form halfway filled, you may have to, like, take the whole, you know, container. Pause it. All the memory. Duplicate it. Restart it from there. It could be very slow. So, we haven't found a thing. Like, the easy thing to fork is just, like, copy the page object. You know? But I think there needs to be something a little bit more robust there. Yeah.swyx [00:33:12]: So, MorphLabs has this infinite branch thing. Like, wrote a custom fork of Linux or something that let them save the system state and clone it. MorphLabs, hit me up. I'll be a customer. Yeah. That's the only. I think that's the only way to do it. Yeah. Like, unless Chrome has some special API for you. Yeah.Paul [00:33:29]: There's probably something we'll reverse engineer one day. I don't know. Yeah.Alessio [00:33:32]: Let's talk about StageHand, the AI web browsing framework. You have three core components, Observe, Extract, and Act. Pretty clean landing page. What was the idea behind making a framework? Yeah.Stagehand: AI web browsing frameworkPaul [00:33:43]: So, there's three frameworks that are very popular or already exist, right? Puppeteer, Playwright, Selenium. Those are for building hard-coded scripts to control websites. And as soon as I started to play with LLMs plus browsing, I caught myself, you know, code-genning Playwright code to control a website. I would, like, take the DOM. I'd pass it to an LLM. I'd say, can you generate the Playwright code to click the appropriate button here? And it would do that. And I was like, this really should be part of the frameworks themselves. And I became really obsessed with SDKs that take natural language as part of, like, the API input. And that's what StageHand is. StageHand exposes three APIs, and it's a super set of Playwright. So, if you go to a page, you may want to take an action, click on the button, fill in the form, etc. That's what the act command is for. You may want to extract some data. This one takes a natural language, like, extract the winner of the Super Bowl from this page. You can give it a Zod schema, so it returns a structured output. And then maybe you're building an API. You can do an agent loop, and you want to kind of see what actions are possible on this page before taking one. You can do observe. So, you can observe the actions on the page, and it will generate a list of actions. You can guide it, like, give me actions on this page related to buying an item. And you can, like, buy it now, add to cart, view shipping options, and pass that to an LLM, an agent loop, to say, what's the appropriate action given this high-level goal? So, StageHand isn't a web agent. It's a framework for building web agents. And we think that agent loops are actually pretty close to the application layer because every application probably has different goals or different ways it wants to take steps. I don't think I've seen a generic. Maybe you guys are the experts here. I haven't seen, like, a really good AI agent framework here. Everyone kind of has their own special sauce, right? I see a lot of developers building their own agent loops, and they're using tools. And I view StageHand as the browser tool. So, we expose act, extract, observe. Your agent can call these tools. And from that, you don't have to worry about it. You don't have to worry about generating playwright code performantly. You don't have to worry about running it. You can kind of just integrate these three tool calls into your agent loop and reliably automate the web.swyx [00:35:48]: A special shout-out to Anirudh, who I met at your dinner, who I think listens to the pod. Yeah. Hey, Anirudh.Paul [00:35:54]: Anirudh's a man. He's a StageHand guy.swyx [00:35:56]: I mean, the interesting thing about each of these APIs is they're kind of each startup. Like, specifically extract, you know, Firecrawler is extract. There's, like, Expand AI. There's a whole bunch of, like, extract companies. They just focus on extract. I'm curious. Like, I feel like you guys are going to collide at some point. Like, right now, it's friendly. Everyone's in a blue ocean. At some point, it's going to be valuable enough that there's some turf battle here. I don't think you have a dog in a fight. I think you can mock extract to use an external service if they're better at it than you. But it's just an observation that, like, in the same way that I see each option, each checkbox in the side of custom GBTs becoming a startup or each box in the Karpathy chart being a startup. Like, this is also becoming a thing. Yeah.Paul [00:36:41]: I mean, like, so the way StageHand works is that it's MIT-licensed, completely open source. You bring your own API key to your LLM of choice. You could choose your LLM. We don't make any money off of the extract or really. We only really make money if you choose to run it with our browser. You don't have to. You can actually use your own browser, a local browser. You know, StageHand is completely open source for that reason. And, yeah, like, I think if you're building really complex web scraping workflows, I don't know if StageHand is the tool for you. I think it's really more if you're building an AI agent that needs a few general tools or if it's doing a lot of, like, web automation-intensive work. But if you're building a scraping company, StageHand is not your thing. You probably want something that's going to, like, get HTML content, you know, convert that to Markdown, query it. That's not what StageHand does. StageHand is more about reliability. I think we focus a lot on reliability and less so on cost optimization and speed at this point.swyx [00:37:33]: I actually feel like StageHand, so the way that StageHand works, it's like, you know, page.act, click on the quick start. Yeah. It's kind of the integration test for the code that you would have to write anyway, like the Puppeteer code that you have to write anyway. And when the page structure changes, because it always does, then this is still the test. This is still the test that I would have to write. Yeah. So it's kind of like a testing framework that doesn't need implementation detail.Paul [00:37:56]: Well, yeah. I mean, Puppeteer, Playwright, and Slenderman were all designed as testing frameworks, right? Yeah. And now people are, like, hacking them together to automate the web. I would say, and, like, maybe this is, like, me being too specific. But, like, when I write tests, if the page structure changes. Without me knowing, I want that test to fail. So I don't know if, like, AI, like, regenerating that. Like, people are using StageHand for testing. But it's more for, like, usability testing, not, like, testing of, like, does the front end, like, has it changed or not. Okay. But generally where we've seen people, like, really, like, take off is, like, if they're using, you know, something. If they want to build a feature in their application that's kind of like Operator or Deep Research, they're using StageHand to kind of power that tool calling in their own agent loop. Okay. Cool.swyx [00:38:37]: So let's go into Operator, the first big agent launch of the year from OpenAI. Seems like they have a whole bunch scheduled. You were on break and your phone blew up. What's your just general view of computer use agents is what they're calling it. The overall category before we go into Open Operator, just the overall promise of Operator. I will observe that I tried it once. It was okay. And I never tried it again.OpenAI's Operator and computer use agentsPaul [00:38:58]: That tracks with my experience, too. Like, I'm a huge fan of the OpenAI team. Like, I think that I do not view Operator as the company. I'm not a company killer for browser base at all. I think it actually shows people what's possible. I think, like, computer use models make a lot of sense. And I'm actually most excited about computer use models is, like, their ability to, like, really take screenshots and reasoning and output steps. I think that using mouse click or mouse coordinates, I've seen that proved to be less reliable than I would like. And I just wonder if that's the right form factor. What we've done with our framework is anchor it to the DOM itself, anchor it to the actual item. So, like, if it's clicking on something, it's clicking on that thing, you know? Like, it's more accurate. No matter where it is. Yeah, exactly. Because it really ties in nicely. And it can handle, like, the whole viewport in one go, whereas, like, Operator can only handle what it sees. Can you hover? Is hovering a thing that you can do? I don't know if we expose it as a tool directly, but I'm sure there's, like, an API for hovering. Like, move mouse to this position. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you can trigger hover, like, via, like, the JavaScript on the DOM itself. But, no, I think, like, when we saw computer use, everyone's eyes lit up because they realized, like, wow, like, AI is going to actually automate work for people. And I think seeing that kind of happen from both of the labs, and I'm sure we're going to see more labs launch computer use models, I'm excited to see all the stuff that people build with it. I think that I'd love to see computer use power, like, controlling a browser on browser base. And I think, like, Open Operator, which was, like, our open source version of OpenAI's Operator, was our first take on, like, how can we integrate these models into browser base? And we handle the infrastructure and let the labs do the models. I don't have a sense that Operator will be released as an API. I don't know. Maybe it will. I'm curious to see how well that works because I think it's going to be really hard for a company like OpenAI to do things like support CAPTCHA solving or, like, have proxies. Like, I think it's hard for them structurally. Imagine this New York Times headline, OpenAI CAPTCHA solving. Like, that would be a pretty bad headline, this New York Times headline. Browser base solves CAPTCHAs. No one cares. No one cares. And, like, our investors are bored. Like, we're all okay with this, you know? We're building this company knowing that the CAPTCHA solving is short-lived until we figure out how to authenticate good bots. I think it's really hard for a company like OpenAI, who has this brand that's so, so good, to balance with, like, the icky parts of web automation, which it can be kind of complex to solve. I'm sure OpenAI knows who to call whenever they need you. Yeah, right. I'm sure they'll have a great partnership.Alessio [00:41:23]: And is Open Operator just, like, a marketing thing for you? Like, how do you think about resource allocation? So, you can spin this up very quickly. And now there's all this, like, open deep research, just open all these things that people are building. We started it, you know. You're the original Open. We're the original Open operator, you know? Is it just, hey, look, this is a demo, but, like, we'll help you build out an actual product for yourself? Like, are you interested in going more of a product route? That's kind of the OpenAI way, right? They started as a model provider and then…Paul [00:41:53]: Yeah, we're not interested in going the product route yet. I view Open Operator as a model provider. It's a reference project, you know? Let's show people how to build these things using the infrastructure and models that are out there. And that's what it is. It's, like, Open Operator is very simple. It's an agent loop. It says, like, take a high-level goal, break it down into steps, use tool calling to accomplish those steps. It takes screenshots and feeds those screenshots into an LLM with the step to generate the right action. It uses stagehand under the hood to actually execute this action. It doesn't use a computer use model. And it, like, has a nice interface using the live view that we talked about, the iframe, to embed that into an application. So I felt like people on launch day wanted to figure out how to build their own version of this. And we turned that around really quickly to show them. And I hope we do that with other things like deep research. We don't have a deep research launch yet. I think David from AOMNI actually has an amazing open deep research that he launched. It has, like, 10K GitHub stars now. So he's crushing that. But I think if people want to build these features natively into their application, they need good reference projects. And I think Open Operator is a good example of that.swyx [00:42:52]: I don't know. Actually, I'm actually pretty bullish on API-driven operator. Because that's the only way that you can sort of, like, once it's reliable enough, obviously. And now we're nowhere near. But, like, give it five years. It'll happen, you know. And then you can sort of spin this up and browsers are working in the background and you don't necessarily have to know. And it just is booking restaurants for you, whatever. I can definitely see that future happening. I had this on the landing page here. This might be a slightly out of order. But, you know, you have, like, sort of three use cases for browser base. Open Operator. Or this is the operator sort of use case. It's kind of like the workflow automation use case. And it completes with UiPath in the sort of RPA category. Would you agree with that? Yeah, I would agree with that. And then there's Agents we talked about already. And web scraping, which I imagine would be the bulk of your workload right now, right?Paul [00:43:40]: No, not at all. I'd say actually, like, the majority is browser automation. We're kind of expensive for web scraping. Like, I think that if you're building a web scraping product, if you need to do occasional web scraping or you have to do web scraping that works every single time, you want to use browser automation. Yeah. You want to use browser-based. But if you're building web scraping workflows, what you should do is have a waterfall. You should have the first request is a curl to the website. See if you can get it without even using a browser. And then the second request may be, like, a scraping-specific API. There's, like, a thousand scraping APIs out there that you can use to try and get data. Scraping B. Scraping B is a great example, right? Yeah. And then, like, if those two don't work, bring out the heavy hitter. Like, browser-based will 100% work, right? It will load the page in a real browser, hydrate it. I see.swyx [00:44:21]: Because a lot of people don't render to JS.swyx [00:44:25]: Yeah, exactly.Paul [00:44:26]: So, I mean, the three big use cases, right? Like, you know, automation, web data collection, and then, you know, if you're building anything agentic that needs, like, a browser tool, you want to use browser-based.Alessio [00:44:35]: Is there any use case that, like, you were super surprised by that people might not even think about? Oh, yeah. Or is it, yeah, anything that you can share? The long tail is crazy. Yeah.Surprising use cases of BrowserbasePaul [00:44:44]: One of the case studies on our website that I think is the most interesting is this company called Benny. So, the way that it works is if you're on food stamps in the United States, you can actually get rebates if you buy certain things. Yeah. You buy some vegetables. You submit your receipt to the government. They'll give you a little rebate back. Say, hey, thanks for buying vegetables. It's good for you. That process of submitting that receipt is very painful. And the way Benny works is you use their app to take a photo of your receipt, and then Benny will go submit that receipt for you and then deposit the money into your account. That's actually using no AI at all. It's all, like, hard-coded scripts. They maintain the scripts. They've been doing a great job. And they build this amazing consumer app. But it's an example of, like, all these, like, tedious workflows that people have to do to kind of go about their business. And they're doing it for the sake of their day-to-day lives. And I had never known about, like, food stamp rebates or the complex forms you have to do to fill them. But the world is powered by millions and millions of tedious forms, visas. You know, Emirate Lighthouse is a customer, right? You know, they do the O1 visa. Millions and millions of forms are taking away humans' time. And I hope that Browserbase can help power software that automates away the web forms that we don't need anymore. Yeah.swyx [00:45:49]: I mean, I'm very supportive of that. I mean, forms. I do think, like, government itself is a big part of it. I think the government itself should embrace AI more to do more sort of human-friendly form filling. Mm-hmm. But I'm not optimistic. I'm not holding my breath. Yeah. We'll see. Okay. I think I'm about to zoom out. I have a little brief thing on computer use, and then we can talk about founder stuff, which is, I tend to think of developer tooling markets in impossible triangles, where everyone starts in a niche, and then they start to branch out. So I already hinted at a little bit of this, right? We mentioned more. We mentioned E2B. We mentioned Firecrawl. And then there's Browserbase. So there's, like, all this stuff of, like, have serverless virtual computer that you give to an agent and let them do stuff with it. And there's various ways of connecting it to the internet. You can just connect to a search API, like SERP API, whatever other, like, EXA is another one. That's what you're searching. You can also have a JSON markdown extractor, which is Firecrawl. Or you can have a virtual browser like Browserbase, or you can have a virtual machine like Morph. And then there's also maybe, like, a virtual sort of code environment, like Code Interpreter. So, like, there's just, like, a bunch of different ways to tackle the problem of give a computer to an agent. And I'm just kind of wondering if you see, like, everyone's just, like, happily coexisting in their respective niches. And as a developer, I just go and pick, like, a shopping basket of one of each. Or do you think that you eventually, people will collide?Future of browser automation and market competitionPaul [00:47:18]: I think that currently it's not a zero-sum market. Like, I think we're talking about... I think we're talking about all of knowledge work that people do that can be automated online. All of these, like, trillions of hours that happen online where people are working. And I think that there's so much software to be built that, like, I tend not to think about how these companies will collide. I just try to solve the problem as best as I can and make this specific piece of infrastructure, which I think is an important primitive, the best I possibly can. And yeah. I think there's players that are actually going to like it. I think there's players that are going to launch, like, over-the-top, you know, platforms, like agent platforms that have all these tools built in, right? Like, who's building the rippling for agent tools that has the search tool, the browser tool, the operating system tool, right? There are some. There are some. There are some, right? And I think in the end, what I have seen as my time as a developer, and I look at all the favorite tools that I have, is that, like, for tools and primitives with sufficient levels of complexity, you need to have a solution that's really bespoke to that primitive, you know? And I am sufficiently convinced that the browser is complex enough to deserve a primitive. Obviously, I have to. I'm the founder of BrowserBase, right? I'm talking my book. But, like, I think maybe I can give you one spicy take against, like, maybe just whole OS running. I think that when I look at computer use when it first came out, I saw that the majority of use cases for computer use were controlling a browser. And do we really need to run an entire operating system just to control a browser? I don't think so. I don't think that's necessary. You know, BrowserBase can run browsers for way cheaper than you can if you're running a full-fledged OS with a GUI, you know, operating system. And I think that's just an advantage of the browser. It is, like, browsers are little OSs, and you can run them very efficiently if you orchestrate it well. And I think that allows us to offer 90% of the, you know, functionality in the platform needed at 10% of the cost of running a full OS. Yeah.Open Operator: Browserbase's Open-Source Alternativeswyx [00:49:16]: I definitely see the logic in that. There's a Mark Andreessen quote. I don't know if you know this one. Where he basically observed that the browser is turning the operating system into a poorly debugged set of device drivers, because most of the apps are moved from the OS to the browser. So you can just run browsers.Paul [00:49:31]: There's a place for OSs, too. Like, I think that there are some applications that only run on Windows operating systems. And Eric from pig.dev in this upcoming YC batch, or last YC batch, like, he's building all run tons of Windows operating systems for you to control with your agent. And like, there's some legacy EHR systems that only run on Internet-controlled systems. Yeah.Paul [00:49:54]: I think that's it. I think, like, there are use cases for specific operating systems for specific legacy software. And like, I'm excited to see what he does with that. I just wanted to give a shout out to the pig.dev website.swyx [00:50:06]: The pigs jump when you click on them. Yeah. That's great.Paul [00:50:08]: Eric, he's the former co-founder of banana.dev, too.swyx [00:50:11]: Oh, that Eric. Yeah. That Eric. Okay. Well, he abandoned bananas for pigs. I hope he doesn't start going around with pigs now.Alessio [00:50:18]: Like he was going around with bananas. A little toy pig. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. What else are we missing? I think we covered a lot of, like, the browser-based product history, but. What do you wish people asked you? Yeah.Paul [00:50:29]: I wish people asked me more about, like, what will the future of software look like? Because I think that's really where I've spent a lot of time about why do browser-based. Like, for me, starting a company is like a means of last resort. Like, you shouldn't start a company unless you absolutely have to. And I remain convinced that the future of software is software that you're going to click a button and it's going to do stuff on your behalf. Right now, software. You click a button and it maybe, like, calls it back an API and, like, computes some numbers. It, like, modifies some text, whatever. But the future of software is software using software. So, I may log into my accounting website for my business, click a button, and it's going to go load up my Gmail, search my emails, find the thing, upload the receipt, and then comment it for me. Right? And it may use it using APIs, maybe a browser. I don't know. I think it's a little bit of both. But that's completely different from how we've built software so far. And that's. I think that future of software has different infrastructure requirements. It's going to require different UIs. It's going to require different pieces of infrastructure. I think the browser infrastructure is one piece that fits into that, along with all the other categories you mentioned. So, I think that it's going to require developers to think differently about how they've built software for, you know
In this episode of the Know Your Why Podcast, Dr. Jason Balara sits down with Fred Moskowitz, a bestselling author and expert in note investing, to discuss the power of mortgage notes as a passive income strategy. Fred shares his journey from a tech engineer to a successful fund manager, highlighting the importance of financial diversification and building multiple income streams. He breaks down the fundamentals of note investing, explaining how it allows investors to act as lenders rather than property owners. The conversation delves into market trends, the impact of rising interest rates, and the key differences between active and passive investing in notes. Fred also emphasizes the importance of financial education, relationship-building, and understanding your financial ‘why' to create long-term wealth and security.Key Highlights:- Diversifying Income Streams: Financial security comes from having multiple sources of income.- The Power of Note Investing: Mortgage notes provide a passive alternative to owning rental properties.- Scalability in Investing: The note market allows for strategic growth without hands-on property management.- Impact of Interest Rates: Market trends and rising rates significantly influence mortgage investments.- Longer Home Retention: Low interest rates are causing homeowners to stay put longer, affecting the market.- Building Relationships: Success in note investing relies heavily on networking and strong industry connections.- Understanding Your Financial ‘Why': A clear purpose helps guide strategic investment decisions.Fred Moskowitz's insights shed light on the often-overlooked world of note investing and how it can be a powerful tool for generating passive income and financial resilience. Whether you're an experienced investor or just starting out, this episode of the Know Your Why Podcast provides valuable strategies for diversifying wealth and securing long-term financial stability. Tune in to learn how mortgage notes can help you build financial freedom while minimizing the hands-on challenges of traditional real estate investing.Get a copy of Fred's book, “The Little Green Book Of Note Investing", on Amazon:https://amzn.to/3I0pR49Get in touch with Fred:Website: https://www.fredmoskowitz.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefredmoskowitz/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fred.moskowitz.18LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thefredmoskowitz/If you want to know more about Dr. Jason Balara and the Know your Why Podcast:https://linktr.ee/jasonbalara Audio Track:Back To The Wood by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/Artist:http://audionautix.com/
On this episode of "Accelerate Your Business Growth," host Diane Helbig is joined by Leslie Hassler of YourBizRules, a company dedicated to transforming businesses from cash-strapped and struggling to thriving and cash-generating. Leslie specializes in working with smart, dedicated women business owners in service-based industries, guiding them to scale their businesses profitably with ease and sustainability. During this insightful conversation, Leslie breaks down the significant differences between growth and scalability, sharing how business owners can recognize when they are ready to scale and the steps they need to take to achieve it. With a keen focus on profits and ease, Leslie dives into critical strategies for enhancing business operations, leadership, and strategic planning. Listeners will gain valuable knowledge on: · The fundamental distinctions between business growth and scalability. · Key indicators that demonstrate readiness for scaling. · Essential leadership transformations for fluid and adaptive management. · Operational tactics to unleash hidden cash flows and improve team productivity. · Strategic planning methods to ensure sustainable and profitable business expansion. Packed with actionable insights and practical tools, this episode is a must-listen for eager entrepreneurs looking to take their business to the next level. Tune in for an engaging discussion on building a robust, scalable, and profitable business model. If you are a small business owner or salesperson who struggles with getting the sales results you are looking for, get your copy of Succeed Without Selling today. Learn the importance of Always Be Curious. Accelerate Your Business Growth is proud to be included on the list of the 45 Best Business Growth Podcasts. Each episode of this podcast provides insights and education around topics that are important to you as a business owner or leader. The content comes from people who are experts in their fields and who are interested in helping you be more successful. Whether it's sales challenges, leadership issues, hiring and talent struggles, marketing, seo, branding, time management, customer service, communication, podcasting, social media, cashflow, or publishing, the best and the brightest join the host, Diane Helbig, for a casual conversation. Discover programs, webinars, services, books, and other podcasts you can tap into for fresh ideas. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode and visit Helbig Enterprises to explore the many ways Diane can help you improve your business outcomes and results. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Prabal Banerjee, co-founder of Avail, is a researcher and technical leader. He spearheaded the implementation of the Data Availability layer in 2020 and led a team of researchers to explore new frontiers in cryptography and blockchain technology.Prabal's interest in cryptography began in 2013, which led him to explore blockchain technology in 2016. He accumulated a wide range of internship experience with companies including IBM and Oracle. With his extensive expertise and passion for blockchains, Prabal is poised to continue leading the way in exploring the possibilities of this exciting and fast-evolving field for years to come.In this conversation, we discuss:- Breaking down the $LIBRA token launch- The future of blockchain interoperability- Web2 allows us to scale, Web3 has too many chains and we need more interoperability- When will the interoperability problem be fixed- The nuances of blockchains- How cross-chain communication is evolving and why interoperability is critical for the next phase of Web3 growth- The challenges of fragmented ecosystems and how unification can drive adoption- Scalability in Web3: are we ready for mass adaption?- Avail DA, Avail Fusion, Avail NexusAvailWebsite: www.availproject.orgX: @AvailProjectLinkedIn: AvailPrabal BanerjeeX: @prabalbanerjeeLinkedIn: Prabal Banerjee --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This episode is brought to you by PrimeXBT. PrimeXBT offers a robust trading system for both beginners and professional traders that demand highly reliable market data and performance. Traders of all experience levels can easily design and customize layouts and widgets to best fit their trading style. PrimeXBT is always offering innovative products and professional trading conditions to all customers. PrimeXBT is running an exclusive promotion for listeners of the podcast. After making your first deposit, 50% of that first deposit will be credited to your account as a bonus that can be used as additional collateral to open positions. Code: CRYPTONEWS50 This promotion is available for a month after activation. Click the link below: PrimeXBT x CRYPTONEWS50
In this episode of the Crazy Wisdom Podcast, host Stewart Alsop speaks with Jason Nadaf, CEO and founder of SureDone, about the evolving landscape of e-commerce, automation, and the role of AI in shaping the future of online sales. They explore how multi-channel selling has transformed over the years, the inefficiencies of big tech in commerce, and the philosophical implications of accelerationism and capitalism's efficiency. Jason shares his personal journey in building SureDone, lessons from scaling businesses, and insights into the intersection of technology and human behavior. For more on Jason's work, visit his site at SureDone.com or connect with him on Linkedin.Check out this GPT we trained on the conversation!Timestamps00:00 Introduction to the Crazy Wisdom Podcast00:13 Jason Nadaf's Vision for Sure Done01:31 The Evolution of E-commerce03:06 Building Multi-Channel Solutions07:00 Challenges in E-commerce Automation11:05 The Role of AI in E-commerce13:51 Accelerationism and Capitalism18:36 The Myth of 'Build It and They Will Come'19:01 Learning from Failed Playbooks19:58 The Role of Bureaucracy and Incentives20:57 Humanistic Energy and Potential25:14 Exploring Neurodivergence and Normies28:53 The Future of Simulation and Modeling31:12 Balancing Stress and Happiness33:42 Final Thoughts on E-commerce and Human DesireKey InsightsThe Future of E-Commerce Lies in Automation and AI – Jason Nadaf discusses how automation has already transformed e-commerce by reducing manual work, streamlining listings, and optimizing multi-channel selling. AI is the next frontier, enabling sellers to create more compelling product descriptions, analyze customer behavior, and predict trends. However, AI still struggles with generating accurate product data from raw materials, requiring human oversight.Big Tech Often Miscalculates Market Adoption – Large corporations tend to assume that building a new platform or marketplace automatically attracts users. Jason shares how two of the world's biggest tech companies underestimated the effort required to onboard sellers and drive traction, leading to delays in adoption. Success in e-commerce requires a deep understanding of seller needs, rather than relying solely on brand recognition or market dominance.Capitalism is Not as Efficient as It Could Be – While capitalism drives innovation, Jason argues that it often misallocates resources. Talent and potential don't always correlate with opportunity, meaning that some of the most innovative minds never get the funding or support they need. Bureaucracy within large corporations further slows down decision-making and stifles innovation.Diversification is Essential for Long-Term Success – Many sellers rely too heavily on a single platform, such as Amazon, without realizing how vulnerable they are to policy changes or algorithm updates. Jason emphasizes the importance of spreading risk across multiple marketplaces, search engines, and social platforms to ensure resilience against sudden disruptions.The Acceleration of Technology Will Reshape Commerce – The concept of accelerationism, which suggests that technological progress is rapidly compounding, is particularly relevant to e-commerce. AI, automation, and digital tools are evolving faster than ever, potentially leading to a future where single-person companies can rival large enterprises in efficiency and revenue.Human Intent in Commerce is Complex and Non-Uniform – A major takeaway from Jason's experience in e-commerce is that consumer intent varies widely across cultures, platforms, and product categories. A successful sales strategy on Amazon might not work on Instagram or TikTok. Understanding these nuances is key to crafting effective product listings, advertisements, and pricing models.Stress and Uncertainty Are Inevitable, But Perspective Matters – As the digital landscape evolves unpredictably, many entrepreneurs and professionals experience stress about the future. Jason suggests that while predicting the future is nearly impossible, adaptability and maintaining a clear perspective can help individuals and businesses thrive. Rather than being paralyzed by uncertainty, focusing on actionable strategies and innovation is the best way forward.
How a does a go-to-market strategy drive product roadmaps and achieve scalability? The scale and urgency of the transformation required to fight climate change has never been more clear. Building hardware and software products, acquiring the funding and creating a diverse community to enhance talent capacity and to drive innovation, is essential to tackling this global environmental crisis. In this podcast, host and Silicon Valley Bank (a division of First Citizens Bank) Climate Tech & Sustainability SVP Maggie Wong will be interviewing Aircapture COO Michael Vyvoda to discuss how a go-to-market strategy shapes the product roadmap to achieve scalability, the importance of curating a diverse workplace environment, a great product manager being a "unicorn".
With Megan Huber, a Client Retention Specialist and Business Acceleration Mentor who partners with established, high growth online coaching and education based business owners and their teams to increase client results, retention and revenue leading to greater profitability, scalability, and sustainability. Megan combines her 19 years of experience across public education, athletic coaching, curriculum development, client success management, group coaching, and entrepreneurship in a way to support leaders and teams to provide a superior client experience so that customers never want to leave.Join us in our conversation as Megan shares her insights on client experience, retention, and business growth. She discusses how businesses can improve operational processes and create a seamless client journey. Megan also offers practical strategies to enhance client success while balancing business scalability. Tune in to learn how to turn your clients into loyal advocates.To listen to the podcast and access the show notes and any other resources mentioned in this episode, visit us at www.legalwebsitewarrior.com/podcast.
Is distance learning just a pandemic-era stopgap, or does it have lasting potential in education?Virtual learning skeptics often assume that online education was a temporary fix—an emergency response rather than a viable long-term model. Many educators and policymakers still equate today's online learning with the chaotic transition of 2020, failing to recognize how far the field has come.In this episode, John Watson, founder and CEO of DLAC and the Digital Learning Annual Conference, joins us to challenge these misconceptions. As one of the leading voices in digital education, John has spent decades tracking the evolution of online learning, from early adoption to the cutting-edge innovations shaping its future.Key Insights & Takeaways:✅ Distance Learning Is Not a Pandemic Experiment—It's a Proven Model. • Many assume that online learning started with COVID, but John explains how digital education has been a long-standing movement with a robust foundation before the pandemic. • The abrupt shift in 2020 was emergency remote learning, not the structured, effective virtual programs that have been evolving for decades.✅ The Reality: Virtual Learning Expands, Not Replaces, Student Options. • Online courses are often the only way students can access AP classes, dual enrollment, or specialized subjects. • Hybrid and online programs are built on choice, allowing students to personalize their learning while maintaining flexibility.✅ The Future of Education Is Hybrid, Not Either-Or. • The next wave of education isn't about choosing between online and in-person—it's about blending the best of both. • DLAC attendees are shaping innovative hybrid models, where online learning enhances, rather than replaces, traditional schools.✅ Sustainability and Lifelong Learning Matter More Than Ever. • AI, virtual reality, and digital tools are reshaping education, but sustainable models require schools to focus on personalization and long-term adaptability. • John shares a powerful story of a student who went from nearly dropping out to excelling in a hybrid learning model, proving that online education creates futures, not just classrooms.Actionable Takeaway:Educators and policymakers must shift their focus from debating if distance learning has a future to optimizing its role in expanding educational access and personalization. The key isn't replacing in-person learning but designing flexible, high-quality options that meet students' diverse needs.
Jayendra "Jay" Jog is the Co-Founder of Sei Labs, the team behind the Sei Network, a high-performance, low-fee, general-purpose blockchain designed for the best UX for developers and users. Before Sei, Jay was a software engineer at Robinhood, an experience that inspired his decision to build a layer-1 blockchain capable of Web2 scale.In this conversation, we discuss:- L1s vs. L2s- Working at Robinhood during the Gamestop saga- T+2 settlement period is archaic and crypto solves this- Sei's origin story- Base layer blockchains- The EVM is here to stay- Solving the EVM's scalability issues- Unlocking Web2-level performance- Sei's Giga Roadmap- Stablecoin tooling- AI agents- $SEISei LabsWebsite: www.sei.ioX: @Sei_LabsTelegram: t.me/seinetworkJay JongX: @jayendra_jogLinkedIn: Jayendra Jog--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This episode is brought to you by PrimeXBT. PrimeXBT offers a robust trading system for both beginners and professional traders that demand highly reliable market data and performance. Traders of all experience levels can easily design and customize layouts and widgets to best fit their trading style. PrimeXBT is always offering innovative products and professional trading conditions to all customers. PrimeXBT is running an exclusive promotion for listeners of the podcast. After making your first deposit, 50% of that first deposit will be credited to your account as a bonus that can be used as additional collateral to open positions. Code: CRYPTONEWS50 This promotion is available for a month after activation. Click the link below: PrimeXBT x CRYPTONEWS50
Morgan Housel made his first investment at 18, putting $1,000 into a certificate of deposit at his local bank. When he started earning interest on that saving, he was hooked. He dove into books on finance, investing, and wealth building, eventually becoming a financial columnist for The Motley Fool and The Wall Street Journal. In today's episode, Morgan shares why he thinks personal finance is more like psychology than physics, some of the common emotional pitfalls that can derail your financial planning, and much more. In this episode, Hala and Morgan will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (05:49) Early Financial Experiences (09:05) The Life-Changing Ski Accident (16:17) Career at Motley Fool and Transition (18:07) Writing and Publishing Books (28:30) The Psychology of Money (32:09) Personal Financial Philosophy (36:53) The Purpose of Money (38:40) Emotional Pitfalls in Personal Finance and Investing (42:39) The Art of Keeping Wealth (44:40) Balancing Optimism and Pessimism in Business (51:21) The Long Tail Strategy in Investing (54:10) The Importance of Patience in Investing (01:00:10) Preparing for Unseen Risks (01:07:08) The Role of Stress and Incentives in Success (01:12:05) Permanent vs. Expiring Information Morgan Housel is a partner at The Collaborative Fund. He's the author of the bestselling book The Psychology of Money. He is a two-time winner of the Best in Business Award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, and winner of the New York Times Sidney Award. In 2022, MarketWatch named him one of the 50 most influential people in markets. He serves on the board of directors at Markel. Resources Mentioned: Morgan's Podcast: youngandprofiting.co/3ELHGYl Morgan's Book, Same as Ever: youngandprofiting.co/4jZGalU Morgan's Book, The Psychology of Money: youngandprofiting.co/4gIFP3U Episode Sponsors: Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify Airbnb - Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com/host Rocket Money - Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney.com/profiting Indeed - Get a $75 job credit at indeed.com/profiting RobinHood - Receive your 3% boost on annual IRA contributions, sign up at robinhood.com/gold Factor - Get 50% off your first box plus free shipping when you use code FACTORPODCAST at factormeals.com/profiting50off Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services - yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side hustle, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Finance, Personal Finance, Scalability, Investment, Financial Freedom, Risk Management, Business Coaching, Finance Podcast, Finance, Financial, Personal Finance, Stock Market, Scalability, Investment, Risk Management, Financial Planning, Business Coaching, Finance podcast, Investing, Saving
Key Takeaways-launching new projects or contracts, it's essential to accept that the first iteration will often require custom, non-scalable solutions. -During the brainstorming process, it's crucial to recognize the people and resources available to you. -Visionaries often focus on future goals, which can lead to disconnects with present realities. Acknowledging the current state of your business and the need for tailored solutions can help bridge this gap and facilitate progress.-Building a new part of your business may involve trial and error. By creating an initial prototype or custom solution, you can later optimize and scale it as the processes and systems become clearer.-Entrepreneurs may limit their creativity by insisting on scalability from the start. It's important to allow for flexibility and experimentation in the early stages of development to unlock potential ideas and solutions.Connect with Katie:Website: https://katierichardson.com/CASE STUDIES: https://now.katierichardson.com/casestudyLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-richardson-creatorApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whats-working-now/id1515291698BuzzSprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1847280Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kV8cL7eTZ70UAXMOtcBbrNewsletter: https://now.katierichardson.com/newsletter
Irene Chen and Matthew Grenby are the co-founders of Parker Thatch, a luxury handbag and accessories brand they bootstrapped to 8-figures over the course of 20 years. Matt's expertise spans tech, design, and marketing, while Irene brings deep fashion industry knowledge from working with powerhouse brands like Donna Karan and Calvin Klein.In this episode of DTC Pod, Matt and Irene share how they navigated the shift from an e-stationery startup to eventually finding product-market fit with their signature luxury bags. They discuss key lessons learned in bootstrapping—the importance of market timing, how to manage inventory risks, and why flexibility and systems are critical when growing a brand.Interact with other DTC experts and access our monthly fireside chats with industry leaders on DTC Pod Slack.On this episode of DTC Pod, we cover:1. Founding and Evolution of Parker Thatch2. Initial Business Concepts and Pivots3. Strategies for Managing and Allocating Inventory4. Importance of Flexibility in Business Operations5. Bootstrapping and Capital Allocation6. Building Systems for Scalability7. Marketing and Demand Generation Strategies8. Community and Customer EngagementTimestamps00:00 Matt and Irene's backgrounds before Parker Thatch 06:55 Starting an e-stationery business in 200007:43 Pivoting to selling physical stationery and home goods 9:00 Lessons on market timing and pivoting when starting a business11:51 Changing company name from iomoi to Parker Thatch13:52 Creating Parker Thatch's debut handbag18:19 Bootstrapping, capital allocation, inventory decisions22:08 Why early business success depends on flexibility and testing25:53 Introducing leather bags and streamlining production29:10 Why small businesses fail without systems32:29 Shifting to systems thinking to enable business growth35:07 Marketing strategies to drive customer demand37:01 Building community and brand identity around "functional luxury"42:34 Relationship dynamics as husband and wife co-founders45:55 Key focuses for 2025 and beyond with PTTV 47:48 Where to find and connect with Parker ThatchShow notes powered by CastmagicPast guests & brands on DTC Pod include Gilt, PopSugar, Glossier, MadeIN, Prose, Bala, P.volve, Ritual, Bite, Oura, Levels, General Mills, Mid Day Squares, Prose, Arrae, Olipop, Ghia, Rosaluna, Form, Uncle Studios & many more. Additional episodes you might like:• #175 Ariel Vaisbort - How OLIPOP Runs Influencer, Community, & Affiliate Growth• #184 Jake Karls, Midday Squares - Turning Your Brand Into The Influencer With Content• #205 Kasey Stewart: Suckerz- - Powering Your Launch With 300 Million Organic Views• #219 JT Barnett: The TikTok Masterclass For Brands• #223 Lauren Kleinman: The PR & Affiliate Marketing Playbook• #243 Kian Golzari - Source & Develop Products Like The World's Best Brands-----Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further?Shoot us a DM; we'd love to hear from you.Want the weekly TL;DR of tips delivered to your mailbox?Check out our newsletter here.Projects the DTC Pod team is working on:DTCetc - all our favorite brands on the internetOlivea - the extra virgin olive oil & hydroxytyrosol supplementCastmagic - AI Workspace for ContentFollow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!DTCPod InstagramDTCPod TwitterDTCPod TikTok Irene Chen and Matthew Grenby - Co-Founders of Parker ThatchBlaine Bolus - Co-Founder of CastmagicRamon Berrios - Co-Founder of Castmagic
David Bell and Joe Lynch discuss CloneOps.ai: AI phone operations always turned on. David is the Co-founder and CEO of CloneOps, a technology company that empowers teams by automating repetitive tasks, freeing them to focus on high-impact work and reach their full potential. About David Bell David Bell is the Co-founder and CEO of CloneOps, a technology company that empowers teams by automating repetitive tasks, freeing them to focus on high-impact work and reach their full potential. A seasoned leader with over 30 years of experience, David began his career in the transportation industry in 1995, rapidly progressing to leadership roles. As CEO of Smith-Cargo Transportation, he orchestrated a successful exit and sale to a private equity firm. He then co-founded Lean Solutions Group, where he spearheaded two successful liquidity events with private equity and scaled the company to over 10,000 employees across Latin America. Throughout his tenure, David was instrumental in developing go-to-market strategies, forging strategic partnerships, and defining the company's visionary roadmap. About CloneOps CloneOps.ai is transforming phone operations with AI-powered solutions engineered for speed, scale, and efficiency. Built by seasoned industry experts, CloneOps.ai handles high-volume inbound and outbound calls, streamlining workflows and delivering real-time insights that empower human teams to focus on strategic, high-impact initiatives. Its AI-driven virtual agents ensure seamless, 24/7 communication, enhancing customer interactions and automating outreach across diverse industries, from logistics and retail to beyond. A simple, plug-and-play integration minimizes disruption and unlocks immediate productivity gains, improved response times, and measurable growth. CloneOps.ai believes in AI that amplifies human potential, working alongside teams to achieve more. The future of phone operations is here—always turned on. Key Takeaways: CloneOps AI: AI Phone Operations Always Turned On AI-Driven Communication Solutions: CloneOps.ai offers a customizable, AI-powered software solution that revolutionizes how companies manage freight brokerage and logistics. Industry Applications: The platform is designed to handle tasks such as answering inquiries, managing customer interactions, and scheduling, thereby improving efficiency in sectors like logistics, debt collection, retail, medical insurance, and media publications. Scalability and Efficiency: By automating routine communications, CloneOps.ai enables businesses to manage high call volumes effectively, reducing wait times and enhancing customer experience. Real-Time Data Analysis: The platform analyzes call data to identify trends, monitor quality, and provide insights for continuous improvement in customer service and operations. Integration Capabilities: CloneOps.ai integrates seamlessly with existing software systems, including ERP, TMS, CRM, and custom applications, facilitating quick adoption without major disruptions. User-Friendly Interface: The platform offers an intuitive and easy-to-use interface, making it accessible for users without extensive technical knowledge. Learn More About CloneOps AI: AI Phone Operations Always Turned On David Bell | Linkedin CloneOps CloneOps | Linkedin How Can AI Solve Dispatch Inefficiencies CloneOps | Instagram Co-Founder David Bell was live with FreightWaves' Timothy Dooner to discuss smarter phone operations using AI-driven solutions. The Logistics of Logistics Podcast If you enjoy the podcast, please leave a positive review, subscribe, and share it with your friends and colleagues. The Logistics of Logistics Podcast: Google, Apple, Castbox, Spotify, Stitcher, PlayerFM, Tunein, Podbean, Owltail, Libsyn, Overcast Check out The Logistics of Logistics on Youtube
Agent Marketer Podcast - Real Estate Marketing for the Modern Agent
Send us a textThe #1 question in the mortgage world: What's the best CRM? The real answer? Most loan officers are using them WRONG.In this episode of The MLO Project, Frazier and Michael break down why CRMs always seem to disappoint—and it's not the software's fault. Too many LOs expect a CRM to fix their business when it should be the other way around.Here's the truth: Your CRM won't save you. Your plan will. They'll show you how to stop overcomplicating things, set clear non-negotiables, and make your CRM work FOR you. Automation won't build your business—but learning your CRM will. Tune in and level up!00:00 Introduction to the Hottest Mortgage Podcast00:39 Why Your CRM Sucks01:24 Common Misconceptions About CRMs03:27 Choosing the Right CRM for Your Needs06:09 The Importance of Learning Your CRM10:32 Simplifying Your CRM Usage13:33 The Role of Automation in CRMs15:49 Scalability and Community Support22:06 Conclusion and Final ThoughtsConnect with us at themloproject@empowerlo.comSchedule a demo at empowerlo.com
Morgan Housel once looked back at his twenties as a carefree, simple time, living in a beautiful apartment with his wife. But she quickly reminded him how anxious he truly was. His nostalgia had erased the uncertainty he once felt, just like how investors look back at past market growth and assume success was inevitable. In this episode, Morgan explains why the past is never as clear as we remember and why the future won't be either. He also shares how entrepreneurs can build wealth despite uncertainty, the key to long-term success in the stock market, and practical strategies for sustainable financial planning. In this episode, Hala and Morgan will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (02:14) Why Most Financial Resolutions Fail (04:06) Balancing Saving and Spending Habits (09:15) The Power of Long-Term Investing (13:30) Navigating Startup Risks Wisely (15:49) What Sets Genius Entrepreneurs Apart (18:50) Why Doubt Is Necessary for Entrepreneurs (22:23) How Hindsight Can Misguide Investors (29:22) Wealth Inequality in the Social Media Era (34:36) Turning Anxiety About the Future into Action (40:23) The Financial Mistakes We Keep Repeating (48:38) Elon Musk's Extreme Risk-Taking Strategy (50:42) Embracing Failure for Lasting Success (53:55) How Rumors Shape Financial Markets Morgan Housel is an investor, partner at The Collaborative Fund, and author of the New York Times bestsellers The Psychology of Money and Same As Ever. A former columnist for The Motley Fool and The Wall Street Journal, he simplifies complex financial ideas, emphasizing long-term thinking, compounding, and decision-making over market predictions. He is also a two-time Best in Business Award winner from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. Connect with Morgan: Website: morganhousel.com Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/morgan-housel-5b473821 Instagram: instagram.com/morganhousel Twitter: x.com/morganhousel Facebook: facebook.com/morgan.housel.5 Sponsored By: Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify Airbnb - Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com/host Rocket Money - Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney.com/profiting Indeed - Get a $75 job credit at indeed.com/profiting RobinHood - Receive your 3% boost on annual IRA contributions, sign up at robinhood.com/gold Factor - Get 50% off your first box plus free shipping when you use code FACTORPODCAST at factormeals.com/profiting50off Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Resources Mentioned: Morgan Housel: How to ACTUALLY Build Wealth, Investing to Gain Financial Independence | E266: youngandprofiting.co/4147SpO Morgan's Book, The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness: amzn.to/3EoljZ0 Morgan's Book, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes: amzn.to/4aOX7uV Morgan's Podcast, The Morgan Housel Podcast: bit.ly/3EljBre Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Finance, Financial, Personal Finance, Wealth, Stock Market, Scalability, Investment, Financial Freedom, Risk Management, Financial Planning, Business Coaching, Finance Podcast, Investing, Saving.
Do we focus too much on just one type of wealth? What if the key to a happy life isn't retiring early, ascending the corporate ladder, or having more money than you know what to do with? Serial entrepreneur Sahil Bloom spent years chasing money, only to find that it didn't provide happiness—it robbed him of it. Find yourself in the same boat? This episode is for you! Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Money podcast! Today, Sahil joins the show to discuss the core concepts from his latest book, The 5 Types of Wealth. Many FIRE-focused folks believe that financial wealth unlocks time, social, mental, and physical wealth, but Sahil is living proof that this isn't the case. In this episode, he shares about his own journey from financial illiteracy to financial independence, the different levers he pulled along the way, and how he was able to dig himself out of a rut that was slowly destroying his life. Whether you're stuck on the happiness hamster wheel, burned out at your nine-to-five job, or lacking in any area beyond money, you're not alone! Sahil will show you the “x factor” that leads to financial freedom, the best and most scalable side hustles to start, and how to transition from your W2 to entrepreneurship! In This Episode We Cover The five types of wealth explained (and why you shouldn't focus on just one!) The “x factor” that catapults you from a decent living to financial freedom Why increasing your income is more important than controlling your expenses The number one thing the FIRE community gets wrong about building wealth How anyone can start (and scale) their own online business in 2025 Steps every person must take to lay a strong financial foundation The “safety net” you need when moving from stable W2 income to entrepreneurship And So Much More! Links from the Show Mindy on BiggerPockets Scott on BiggerPockets Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Join BiggerPockets for FREE Email Mindy: Mindy@biggerpockets.com Email Scott: Scott@biggerpockets.com BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group The 5 Types of Wealth Sahil's Instagram Try REsimpli, The Only All-In-One Real Estate Investor CRM Software That Helps You Manage Data, Marketing, Sales, and Operations Buy the Book “Pillars of Wealth” Find an Investor-Friendly Agent in Your Area How to Build, Grow, Scale, & SELL Your Online Business (00:00) Intro (01:02) Sahil's Money Journey (03:18) Building a Financial Foundation (13:29) Leaving the Fund & Moving Home (21:43) The “Scalability” of the Internet (28:09) Structuring His Company (33:18) The 3 Pillars of Financial Wealth (39:09) Riding Out the Market (43:40) The 5 Types of Wealth (46:08) Connect with Sahil! (47:03) Build “Well-Rounded” Wealth! Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/money-604 Interested in learning more about today's sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email advertise@biggerpockets.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices